Salty Sweet
by AelysAlthea
Summary: Draco was a Master. He'd always been one, but having a town of Muggles consider him as close to God's gift as they would ever receive was certainly validating. Except it wasn't enough. After years of settling, of conjuring masterpieces with his fingers and his prowess, Draco realised he needed a change. How hard could it be to find an apprentice pâtissier...
1. Chapter 1 - The Breadbasket

**Summary** : Draco was a Master. He'd always been one, but having a town of Muggles consider him as close to God's gift as they would ever receive was certainly validating. Except it wasn't enough. After years of settling, of conjuring masterpieces with his fingers and his prowess, Draco realised he needed a change.

How hard could it be to find an apprentice pâtissier that did what they were told? As it happened, doing 'what was told' was about the last thing on his inevitable prospect's mind. Trust Harry Potter to be the one to turn Draco's life upside down.

 **Rating** : M

 **Tags** : Post-War, Baking, Sugary Goodness, Pâtisseries, Enemies to Friends, Slow Burn

* * *

 **Chapter 1: The Breadbasket**

 _~As a sign of hospitality, bread and butter is presented as an offering of welcome and to tide potential diners over until the meal~_

* * *

Merrington was a Muggle town. A wholly Muggle town to the degree that the term 'magic' was only ever mentioned in laughing jest before proceeding to be cast it into disregard. It was unknown why the Wizarding world vacated the far southern region of Britain; little enough of it was understood besides the fact that it happened.

No witches. No wizards. It was one of the main reasons Draco had come to Merrington in the first place.

That, and the quietness, though as it always did on a sleepy morning, one particular storefront was alive with noise. And criticism. Always criticism.

"Just choose a direction and _go_ , girl. Bloody hell, is it so hard?"

Merrington was a modest Muggle town. Overlooking a merry little bay, lighthouse squinting redundantly yet persistently each evening, it was nothing short of wholesome. The town itself was flat and sedate, with cobbled paths lining wide, smooth roads. The houses were equally wide, squat and homely, and gardens flourished in the mild warmth that endured until the depths of winter. Merrington was calm and quiet – mostly.

"If I turn around and that tray is still there, you'll have hell to pay!"

On one particular road, mornings always kickstarted with something of a bang. Boardwalk was reputed for its day-round, year-round open hours, and despite barely two dozen stores lining the wide road, it was often considered the centre of town. There was the pub, The Chuckling Cupid, that doubled as an inn and forever kept its doors open and well-lit for the passing townsman or visiting traveller. There was the bookstore, a quiet, humble abode rich with the scent of dust and flooded with polished wooden antiques. Many considered that particular store more of a library than an actual bookshop.

The grocers, the largest building on the street yet as cheerfully welcoming as the pub and open nearly as long; the hair salon that reeked of peroxide and glowed like a diamond amongst pebbles; the thrift shop that dressed most of the town in a range of quirky yet strangely suitable garb; the corner store or newsagent or tobacconist – the name varied depending upon its buyer. Each were bright and lively and welcoming in their own way, much as Merrington was itself. Even the pâtisserie had its own charm.

That pâtisserie echoed with not-so-cheerful vibrancy as the town roosters crowed their morning wake-up.

"No, no, _no_. I said _two_ batches with raisins and one without. Use your ears for their proper function would you, boy!"

The pâtisserie was the newest store on Boardwalk, but it wasn't truly new. For six years it had been a resident amongst its fellows, and in those years the sweet smells of glaze and cinnamon, of baking yeast and warm ovens, had become a welcome addition to Merrington. Even the incessantly surly pâtissier was adored for the morsels he served with prim and proper accordance to any who stepped across his threshold.

Glass-doored and window-fronted, the pâtisserie was a spread of clean, glowingly white and immaculate perfection upon stepping inside. Polished floors of a marble mimic – or they could have really been marble, some townspeople speculated – and sleekly dark panelling continued its trend to the pair of swinging saloon doors into the kitchen. Hidden behind the counter – the wide, glass counter that more than adequately drew the eye of any customer to the glory of saccharine goods on display – no one stepped through those doors without the express permission of the master pâtissier himself.

That didn't mean that sounds didn't come _out_ from those doors, however.

"A thin glaze, I said. _Thin._ No, don't try and fix it, you'll just make it worse."

"I'm sorry, I –"

"Why do I only have one more bag of icing sugar? _Why_?"

"The other one – I still left it in the pantry in case we didn't –"

"In case we didn't need it? How long have you been working here that you didn't realise we needed _four_ bags in the morning, not three, boy?"

"Oh yeah. Sorry, I –"

"Why are those tarts still sitting atop the oven?"

"I'm sorry, sir, I –"

"Is there something wrong with them?"

"No, sir, I –"

"Then take them out, girl! Fuck, you'd think you didn't have a brain of your own!"

There spilled from the kitchens the sound of scampering footsteps, the clatter of a tray and a yelp chasing on the tail end of an exasperated curse. Then the saloon doors burst open, swinging wildly upon their hinges, and a tall, gangly young woman scurried through. Her curly red hair was a mess, peppered with white puffs of flour, and her apron was already lathered in similar baking stains despite working for barely more than an hour that morning.

In her hands, a wooden tray held a range of sprinkled goods, some still soft with the warmth of the oven and sliding dangerously against one another. Curling tops and smooth dough, speckled sugar and caramelised fruits – the scents flooded the front of the shop and would have turned any head had the shop itself have been opened to allow entrance.

Not that it did. _Anguis In Temptationem_ as a pâtisserie was nothing if not punctual, but similarly it wouldn't open a second before the clock struck seven. Before the _master's_ clock struck seven, at that. The stately Waterbury wall clock still bespoke five minutes til.

"I want them lined up _properly_ today, Eloise!" the master's voice bellowed after her. "None of that uneven crap that I saw yesterday, or I'll have your hide!"

"Yes, sir," Eloise called over her shoulder as she dropped to her knees behind the counter, sliding open the glass doors of the refrigerated interior. To any watcher, and listener, she might have seemed frazzled. Scared, even, and many of the townspeople wouldn't have blamed her; the master pâtissier was far from an unwelcome addition to their town, despite that many tutted for how he all but mistreated his staff. But those people wouldn't have witnessed the slight twitch of her lips, the hint of amusement that had long ago been instilled in her. As Draco Malfoy's first worker – and perhaps the closest thing to family he had in the town – she knew better than to take his words to heart.

 _More's the problem_ , Draco thought as, turning back to his workbench, he took to swinging his pot free from the stovetop. The melted butter within heaved thick, rich plumes into the air, tantalising the nostrils and stimulating the taste buds. Draco barely noticed. Such was more than a common scent to the aromas wafting throughout his kitchen.

The kitchen itself was a mess of pots and pans, trays laden with pastries and tarts, and desserts waiting to be baked, or garnished, or taken out to the shopfront by a particularly lax assistant or two. Every surface, from the wall-hugging counters to the floating bench along the entire length of the room, was neatly arrayed, because Draco couldn't _stand_ discordant and unnecessary mess in his workspace. Not even in the middle of baking hour of a morning.

The ovens were ablaze, all but the primary bread-baking monstrosity squatting at the far end of the extensive room working their magic on his masterpieces. Because they were masterpieces – each and every one of his goods. There was a certain degree of smug satisfaction to be gained from watching noses turn in the direction of a baking oven or serving platter, seeing passers-by slow in their tracks and ponder the prospect of entering his shop before inevitably caving to temptation. There was power in that kind of enticement, and though it was far from being the reason that Draco baked, it was definitely a welcome realisation when that realisation arose.

Not that Draco was thinking of such things at that moment. It was Friday, and that meant a morning of baking choux pastry. He had his order, his system, his timetable – though the kitchen with its three occupants were hardly enough to fill its walls, Draco was detachedly relieved that Margaret had already left for the morning. Though his bread-maker was skilled enough in what she did, he didn't need another person to get in his way. What he needed was –

"Boy, what in heaven's name are you doing _looking_ in the oven," Draco barked over his shoulder as, with an automatic reach for his mixing bowl, he poured the sifted flower into his melted butter. "I said to take them _out_ when they're done."

He didn't need to glance towards the boy across the room to know that he snapped to attention. Plump and dithering, George 'Call me Georgie' McGee squawked as he always did when scolded, the result being a veritable aviary of sounds that followed Draco's orders of a morning. Straightening immediately, Draco heard him jump to task. A tray clattered.

"If you've dropped something, you'll lose your head."

"I haven't dropped it, Dray," George replied. "It's all fine!"

Too enthusiastic. George was _always_ enthusiastic, and it was one of his many, _many_ flaws. He giggled nervously, sometimes even daring to do so when Draco scolded him. He called Draco by name rather than the respectful 'Master' or 'sir' as Eloise had blessedly realised was appropriate. He lost himself distraction too much and subsequently lost track of time; Draco would have almost thought he _wanted_ to work overtime for how often he stayed past his hours. It was only the fact that he came to work late just as often that he was assured otherwise.

Shaking his head to himself, Draco focused upon his pastry. Pot back on the stove, he beat with a firm hand and the mixture reluctantly began to adhere into a ball. George scampered behind him. The swinging doors squeaked slightly with his passing, but Draco ignored them. He stirred, added his whisked eggs, stirred some more and then –

"Sir, it's nearly seven o'clock."

Draco glanced towards where Eloise stood attentively, a wooden tray held before her. He grabbed for the metal spoon he'd placed _precisely_ alongside his stovetop and turned to ladling his mixture out onto the waiting greasy tray. At least his assistants had been reliable enough to provide him with _that_ much.

"Not yet, though," he replied.

"There's one minute."

"But it's not seven?"

Eloise smirked. Draco knew she smirked, even as he didn't glance up from his tray. She thought he didn't know she did it, but… "My tables and chairs are ready?"

"Yes, sir."

"Did George actually sweep the front like I told him to?"

"Yes, sir."

"The coffee machine is –"

"Gutted and cleaned, sir," Eloise finished for him. "Just as I always keep it."

Draco did spare her a glance at that as, wiping his pastry-smeared finger on his apron, he raised his tray aloft and made for the oven. That Eloise considered the coffee machine hers simply because she was the one with the barista license was a consideration not quite under argument only because Eloise had never expressly _claimed_ it as hers.

But it was. Draco would never admit it, but the coffee machine – it was hers.

"Those éclairs are actually straight?"

"I could line them with a ruler," Eloise assured him.

"And all of the fridge desserts have been taken out of the back room?"

"Yes, sir."

Striding across the kitchen, sweeping a glance over his waiting trays, towards the mess filling his sink – "George, clean that crap from the sink!" – and pausing alongside his cooling profiteroles to check their heat, he nodded curtly. "Alright, then. So long as you haven't entirely destroyed the front of the shop –"

"We haven't, sir," Eloise said, readjusting her hold upon her tray to pick up a second in her freed hand.

Draco pointed a finger at her, raising an eyebrow. "Drop them, and you're fired."

Eloise smiled. A small smile, but a smiled nonetheless. "Of course," she said, turning on her heel and, horrifyingly, nearly tripping over her feet as she did so.

Closing his eyes briefly – Merlin help him – Draco bit back a sigh. The girl was, and would likely always be, unutterably clumsy. "Walk _backwards_ into the doors if you would, Eloise," he called as she nearly ploughed headfirst into the kitchen.

"'Kay, sir," she replied before disappearing through. George squawked as he came through a moment later, similarly nearly tripping over himself as he avoiding her passing.

"Boy," Draco said, turning to his bowl of finely chopped chocolate. George had managed that much, at least; he'd finally learnt just how important his knife work was for making ganache.

"Yes, Dray?" George replied a little breathily. What had he been doing that he was struggling for breath, Draco wasn't sure he wanted to know.

"Is the shop open?"

"Not yet, we were just –"

"It's seven o'clock, George," Draco interrupted curtly, not even sparing him a moment to glance as he made his way back to his stovetop with bowls of chocolate and cream in each hand. "We _always_ open at seven o'clock. Hop to."

George squeaked. In a scurry, he was bursting back through the doors. The tinkle of the front doors opening sounded a moment later, as well as what sounded distinctly like muffled laughter. Eloise. It was very likely Eloise. And though Draco wouldn't have abided such a slight to his face, he didn't object to her doing so outside of the room. There were some rules and habits that had developed between them after years of working together, and that was one of them.

Another was how Draco couldn't very well ask her to open the doors after he'd just told her _not_ to. Simple logic bespoke that. Which was why he scolded George into doing it.

So Draco didn't object. Or not to that, at least. When Eloise returned and fell to her tasks of assisting with his baking – or as much as he would let her – he chided her when she erred from perfection in a way that she always accepted without comment. When George returned himself, bumbling and darting between oven and shopfront and nearly colliding into Draco several times, he receiving his own further scolding.

Noise ran rampant through the kitchen, with battering pots and pans and clattering cutlery when it was discarded into the sink. Noise, and maybe it was more noise than three people should make. Controlled chaos reigned, and that was more than three people should have rightly managed, too.

Flour was layered, bowls were beaten with wooden spoons, icing was dusted and hands were slapped when someone – _George_ – tried to tamper with Draco's éclairs with frankly horrifying presumptuousness. Draco allowed Eloise to soothe George's momentarily bruised ego as she took his place in smoothing icing atop the pastry.

In short, Draco's Friday morning was the same as every other. Noise, but for some reason a clatter and clamour that Draco had grown to love. Chaos, but the refined, clockwork chaos of tasks being fulfilled and the general flow of a kitchen as it _should_ be. And if flour flew and mess spread in their wake…

Well, Draco had never been one much for mess, but he had assistants to ensure he didn't have to withstand it for long. The number of times, "Boy, clean up this mess!" resounded throughout the room within the hour was one Draco knew for a fact that Eloise tallied. He'd seen the scoreboard himself.

Draco would never admit it aloud, but he _did_ love his shop. Eloise knew it, even if George was still openly sceptical that Draco 'liked' anything. And though Draco barely even admitted it to himself, he knew it was true.

The noise.

The chaos.

The baking itself, which he so specialised in, and yes, even those who came to purchase his goods and adored him for it.

Draco liked the quiet, sedate little town of Merrington, even – or because of – its lack of Wizarding representation, and he liked the life he'd built for himself. The consistency, the expectancy, was a comfortable blessing.

Not for the first time, as Draco drizzled ganache on his profiteroles, he silently questioned whether he was in the right for his most recent decision. That comfortable consistency… did he really want it to change? Because after that Friday, his pâtisserie would never be the same again.

* * *

The door tinkled with its welcoming chime and Draco glanced up from his tea and newspaper. There was nothing quite like sitting after a morning of crazed work, partaking of a warm cup and scouring an entirely Muggle newspaper for entirely Muggle news.

Better yet, as a self-employed businessman and self-titled pâtissier grandeur, Draco could take a lunch break for as long as he wanted. Uninterrupted, ideally, a fact that George particularly had discovered he preferred barely a month into his employment. He'd retained that knowledge for the past three years, at least.

Uninterrupted, however, would appear to be far from fulfilled. Draco registered that much as soon as he caught a glimpse of Mary McCamley's bleach-blonde head. He didn't need her overloud self-introduction, but he was afflicted by it anyway.

"Hello and good morning, dears!" she all but cried as she stepped inside the door. Her heeled shoes clicked with every shuffling step, and she all but slammed the door behind her. "Such a lovely day, isn't it?"

"Good _afternoon_ , Mrs. McCamley," Eloise said from behind the counter, and Draco would always silently appreciate her slightly passive-aggressive remarks. "How are you today?"

"Oh, very well, very well," Mary assured her, tossing her head slightly as she adjusted her cardigan slightly upon her shoulders. "Hoping to pick up my weekly dose of medicine, as it were. Where is the magician himself?"

Draco, who had turned to regard the sky outside through his impeccably clean windows and questioning how anyone could possibly consider the drizzling day to be 'lovely', drew his gaze back towards Mary at her words. He regarded the back of her head as she shuffled – always shuffled in her impractical shoes – and quietly sipped his tea while she proceeded to monopolise Eloise's attention.

"He's on his lunch break," Eloise said. Draco silently nodded his gratitude that she didn't even glance his way. The shop was wide and spreading, but it wasn't so big that anyone who gave its sparsely spread round tables a cursory glance wouldn't notice him the second they stepped through the door.

"Ah, such a shame," Mary sighed, sounding not in the least regretful. "Well, be sure to give him my regards as I pilfer his goods."

Eloise smiled her small smile that was just enough to be acceptable in a customer service environment. Better than Draco could manage, for that matter, if not quite as good as George's jovial welcomes. "I'll be sure to do that."

Mary barely even seem to hear the reply. Filching around in her overlarge bag, she extracted her purse as she half bent to peer at the shelf of brightly coloured macaroons. "Now, I've got a list of requests, and I'm hoping you'll be able to fulfil them."

"I'm sure we can try," Eloise said.

"The book club would be devastated if I didn't bring them their lime and coconut cookies."

"Macaroons. And I'm sure they would be."

"And I'll certainly die if I'm left without my own daily dose of salted caramel cookies."

"Macaroons. And I'm sure you would."

Draco smirked into his tea as he dropped his gaze back to his newspaper. He truly did like Eloise, for all that she could be an appalling klutz. She had a witty, sarcastic sense of humour that seemed to slip beneath the notice of most of Merrington's residents, and Draco sorely appreciated it. For all that he liked the quiet little town, it would have surely been horribly dull without someone to appreciate his own wit. Eloise didn't openly express her appreciation, but Draco suspected she returned his own it nonetheless.

People like Mary McCamley, however, did not. To say that Mary was the sharpest tool in the shed would be an exaggeration that many wouldn't even consider worth verbalising in the first place, but she was still something of a force to be reckoned with. Years ago, when Draco had first come to town, she'd been one of those most vehemently dismissive and almost aggressively condescending towards him and his 'invasion of local businesses'.

That was until Margaret, Draco's baker, first accepted his proposed integration of her bakery into his own shop. Or, more correctly, until Mary had first partaken of his macaroons.

Food had an effect on people. Draco had never truly appreciated that effect in his youth, but as he'd grown older, as he'd fallen into the pastry-making world for his own pursuits rather than what he could provide for others, he'd made the unexpected discovery. And since setting up shop in Merrington, he'd unearthed just how powerful that effect could be.

Mary McCamley, resident coordinator of half a dozen town clubs, had fallen prey to his macaroons like a charging bull before a _Stupefy_.

John Hansell, Draco's landlord of the 'grand old estate' that had become his pâtisserie, had been the speaker of many a snide remark until he'd too fallen. John held the record for the highest purchaser of Draco's éclairs.

The town representative, Audrey Mallone, doted upon him nearly as much as she did his madeleines. The store-owners on either side of Draco's pâtisserie purchased in bulk, both for arraying his choice croissants in the grocers and to provide as 'Specials' at the local diner. Draco quietly revelled in the appreciative proclamations of both buyers as much as he did the respectable payments they sent his way for the service.

Apprentice barber Brian had discovered a taste for the caramelised sugar almonds Draco kept in modest supply, claiming he'd 'never tasted pralines so yummy before!' The Sanderson twins dropped by every evening at four o'clock on the dot to pick up their choice of desserts for their mother, handing over petty cash with sticky fingers. Pastries and buns, tarts and biscuits and desserts dressed in perfect adornments that Draco spent – and enjoyed spending – hours constructing, were admired, tasted, and appreciated by all. Even the grouchy old Herbert Pickett stopped by every Friday evening to buy a handful of punitions that he nibbled upon as he hobbled out of the store. Draco didn't have much regret that they likely fractured any of the remaining real teeth he had; for all that he was a dedicated customer, Herbert was an unerring grouch.

Draco was wanted in Merrington. Needed, even. And though he didn't care much for being needed, being wanted – nay, _adored_ – was something he'd always enjoyed. That enjoyment was simply of a quieter kind nowadays.

Very decidedly quieter in the case of that Friday afternoon, for to preen before Mary McCamley's praise as she hummed and mumbled over the range of macaroons on display before her would find Draco within her claws in seconds. The woman was far from agreeable company.

So Draco sat quietly, sipping his tea that a wand up his sleeve and a wordless spell ensured never ran dry or cold, and read his newspaper. While not nearly as exciting with its static pictures as the Wizarding _Daily Prophet_ , and even less so as nothing of consequence ever happened in Merrington, Draco enjoyed himself. Particularly the puzzles. He was an ace at crosswords.

The box that Mary was dwarfed beneath as she finally turned to leave would likely serve as being half the profit of that day. Draco regarded her over his teacup and credited himself once more on storing such expansive boxes; the tall, white cardboard, adorned in its green and silver ribbons, nothing if not shielded Mary entirely from view.

George appeared outside the door seemingly by chance as soon as she reached it. "Oh, trouble yourself by opening it for me, dear," Mary said in an overloud voice. Unnecessarily overloud, in Draco's opinion; his doors were reinforced but the glass wasn't _that_ thick.

George, ever the gentleman – or perhaps simply cowed by Mary's presence as most of the town was – jumped to assist immediately. "Good afternoon, Mary," Draco heard him say brightly. "I nearly missed you! Are you stocking up for the bookclub this Sunday? I heard you were reading…"

Draco snorted quietly into his cup. George might not be much of a baker or even an amateur pâtissier, and his coffee-making skills left more than a little to be desired, but he knew how to talk to people. That feature gave him worth, in Draco's opinion. For himself, Draco had little time for people. At least, he didn't anymore.

"We'll probably have to order in a new batch of that Irish salted caramel for next Monday. I think Mrs. McCamley's quite set in her favourites by now."

Draco drew his gaze from where he'd been detachedly regarding Mary's bobbing blonde head as she engaged George in profuse conversation. Poor George. Draco might consider him a sorry excuse for a worker, but he was still his worker. The responsibility for his sanity lay, to some small degree, with Draco. Unfortunately.

Although, out of himself, Eloise and George, the boy seemed the most capable of dealing with the frivolous woman.

Glancing towards where Eloise had propped both elbows upon the counter, he frowned. "You look like a slob." Then, as Eloise only smiled in reply, "I'm perfectly capable of making my own caramel."

"Do you have the time for that?" Eloise asked.

"Of course I do."

"So you're going to work on Sunday again?"

Draco pressed his lips together for a moment. The fact of the matter was that he was indeed likely to work on Sunday. As Eloise stated, however, he would not do so of the typical kind. There was a certain type of 'working' that Draco conducted that required an absence of Muggle gazes. His spontaneously appearing 'Irish caramel' didn't cook itself.

Draco at times regretted the lie he'd told as an excuse on that occasion, even as necessary as it was. Eloise would be blown away to realise the place magic had in his cooking. It had seemed so much easier to simply claim he'd ordered it in.

"What I do in my own time is absolutely none of your business," Draco said. He took a deliberate sip of his tea. "Just as I have no interest in what you do."

Eloise hummed, rocking slightly forwards and backwards upon the counter. While mornings were awhirl with activity, the afternoons in Draco's shop bore the same sedate ambiance as the rest of the town. Eloise's sleepy slump stood testimony to that.

"I'm going out for dinner tonight," she said, almost to herself.

"And you're telling me this why?" Draco asked, flipped to the puzzles section of his paper. For himself, the day was all but done when his morning baking wrapped up, but he'd be damned if he'd leave his store wholly to unsupervised hands.

"Up to that Italian place half an hours outside of town."

"I find Italian food unremarkable," Draco said, pulling a pen from his shirt pocket. While his apron was weighted heavily by all manner of pens and utensils, there was a certain stateliness to be assumed when finished for the day. Draco never wore his apron outside of the kitchen.

"It's got a four-and-a-half star rating," Eloise continued.

"Do I seem like I care?"

"And apparently they're not against offering discounts to customers if you can get in their good books."

"What trivial information you pick up…"

Eloise's amusement was practically tangible, and yet when she continued her, tone was oddly and almost solemnly deliberate. "Maybe you should give it a visit? Take a chance and get out some more? When was the last time you actually went out?"

Draco frowned. He took another sip of tea, then wordlessly reheated it with a twist of his wrist and the concealed wand in its holster. "What's a synonym for the silencer on a pistol?"

Eloise didn't quite snort but Draco heard her amusement blossom further nonetheless. "How may letters?" she asked.

Draco didn't reply, and not because he didn't really need her help with the crossword puzzle. She understood his none-too-subtle hint.

George bustled in not long after, face flushed and apparently pleased with himself. He maintained his good humour even when Draco ordered him to do something useful with himself for his last hour, and his conversation with Eloise, thrown through the saloon doors as he worked upon his never-ending stack of washing, waged a constant battle with the oblivious classical music Draco always instructed Eloise to tune upon the radio. Eloise replied, but likely only out of boredom; George, Draco knew, was far more taken with her than she was with him.

And Draco completed out his crossword. As the door tinkled for entrance of faces familiar and otherwise, he sat and idled away the hours, swapping newspaper for book when his interest in puzzles waned. He barely glanced up when Wilson, the boy who would take over from Eloise and George for the afternoon shift, slipped almost silently through the door.

It was only at the appearance of Violet Lovett that his attention was truly shaken loose.

The afternoon was drifting towards evening, and Wilson, in the quiet way that he always did, had fallen without askance to the task of scrubbing every inch of Draco's pâtisserie until it gleamed. He damn-near managed as well as a Cleaning Charm could, too. Draco liked Wilson in a different way to how he liked Eloise; they'd barely exchanged a handful of sentences outside of rudimentary necessities since he'd been hired, and it worked perfectly for the both of them. Besides that, Wilson liked to clean. He actually liked it, and not in the "Of course I'll clean but I'd prefer to be doing something more creative" way that George did. Wilson seemed wholly satisfied with the duty of resident scullery-maid in Draco's store.

For Draco, self-acclaimed drill sergeant when cleanliness arose as a topic of conversation happened to quite like Wilson's commitment. He quite liked it a lot, in fact.

Violet swept into the store in a flurry of billowing jacket and flipping hair. The first time Draco had seen her, he could have sworn that she was the lost, squb sister of his old friend, Pansy Parkinson. That they both bore floral names seemed to only enhance the resemblance.

And yet that misconception was made starkly apparent as soon as Violet opened her mouth. She was sharp-faced, sharp-eyed, and yet her tongue lacked the sharpness that Pansy's possessed. Like a cat to a kneazle, Violet lacked the spark that Pansy did, and not only because of her absence of magic. She was… unutterably dull.

Unfortunately, she also couldn't take a hint because, for whatever reason, Violet seemed to think Draco enjoyed her company.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Malloy," she said, easing the door closed behind her. At least she didn't let it slam like Mary McCamley. That much Draco could credit her. "How are you? Finishing up for the day?"

Crossing the room, Violet even spared a moment to smile at Wilson as Pansy wouldn't have been caught dead doing. Wilson either didn't realise she had glanced his way or ignored her entirely. He seemed somewhat fixated upon scrubbing at a particularly hardy spot upon the primary counter. Draco approved of his dedication.

Violet paused alongside Draco's table. She beamed down at him, rocking on her heels and fiddling idly with the oversized handbag slung over her shoulder. She looked dressed up, Draco thought. Casually so, but dressed up nonetheless in her fitted jeans and billowy blouse. Even her boots appeared polished. Had Draco any interest in someone eight years his junior, he might have been more than approving of her presentation.

"What are you reading?" Violet asked when Draco only sat back slightly in his seat to afford her his attention. She cocked her head slightly. "Is it any good?"

By way of reply, Draco held up his book for momentary inspection. What little of the blurb Violet could read would have to suffice. "It's entertaining enough."

"Maybe you could lend it to me when you've finished?"

"You could certainly borrow it from the library, I'm sure."

"I'd rather just borrow yours."

Draco fought to suppress a twitch of his eyebrow. Violet was exasperating at times, and much because of her youth. Although, when Draco considered it, when _he'd_ just finished his schooling years, it hadn't been to step into the world with such light-hearted ignorance. The clean up of a war and multiple court cases tended to put a dampener on things.

"Well, as it happens, this copy is from the library," Draco said. "I regret you'll have to borrow."

Violet regarded him for a moment. Then, with a little harrumph, she edged towards the seat opposite him and, after an expectant pause and further glance towards Draco, sat down. Draco wasn't sure what aspect of his minimalist greeting had suggested he was receptive to such company, but he would have to deduce it for future reference. Deduce and quash into oblivion.

"I've just finished up with work," Violet said, placing her bag beside her feet and propping an elbow on the table before her. "I can't say that it's particularly strenuous work, but I'm absolutely famished."

"You should probably get something to eat, then," Draco said, before adding a pointed, "and likely a meal more substantial than tarts and pastries."

Violet, her gaze already drawn towards the spread of delicacies, snapped her attention back towards him. She grinned as though caught in the act, a child with her hand in the cookie jar. "Am I that obvious?"

"Why else would you come into a pâtisserie?"

Violet's smile deepened into something besides amusement. "I can think of at least one," she said.

Was the lowering of her voice supposed to be enticing? Her slow, languid blinks suggestive? Draco didn't know. He didn't truly understand much about Violet besides the fact that she appeared to have taken an interest in him. That interest in itself was likely only a rebounding effect from their accidental first meeting.

She, as many in the town, had poked her head into Draco's store in the early days of his opening to preview the spread of his wares. And she, just liked many before her, appeared immediately enthralled by the possibility of a pâtisserie with French influences setting up shop in their unremarkable midst.

Draco saw her. He saw her entrance, and he nearly started in surprise. Her resemblance to Pansy was truly uncanny. Unfortunately for him, Violet witnessed his surprise. "Hello," she said, stepping into the store. "Are you the owner?"

Draco had only been a young businessman at the time, and Violet even younger. Still in school, he knew, and her uniform proved that much. Still, her resemblance was nothing short of disconcerting. Struggling to drag himself from his thoughts, Draco nodded. "I am."

"Dray Malloy, wasn't it?"

The urge to twitch, to scowl and click his tongue at the necessity of an alias, still irked at Draco in the early years of its use. He'd managed to keep the reflex smothered, however, tipping his head in a nod. "I am."

The then-unnamed-Violet stared at him from just inside the doorway. Not at the shop but at _him_. It was only when she spoke that Draco realised he'd been staring right back. "What?"

"I'm sorry?" he said.

Violet smiled. "You're staring at me."

The hair was slightly different, the nose just a little more pointed and yet… she was _so much_ like Pansy. Draco shook his head, allowing himself the smallest of self-deprecating smiles. "Sorry. You just remind me of someone I know."

Violet still smiled. For a moment it was just that – just a smile. Then that smile widened and she blinked in that languid way that resembled Pansy but for a different reason entirely. "Is that right?" she said.

Apparently, "You reminded me of someone," meant something different to the younger generation. Or perhaps just in different circles to the ones Draco turned in. Since then, he'd grown to understand that Violet had sorely misunderstood him. So sorely, it seemed, that thenceforth, regardless of his attempts at dissuasion, she persisted with her…

Pursuit? Could it even be deemed a pursuit when Draco so stoically denied being chased? Regardless of what Eloise might always tell him about 'getting out more' and 'enjoying himself', he wasn't looking for a relationship. Certainly not one with a Pansy lookalike that didn't quite meet the standard of the original.

That Friday, said lookalike proceeded to chatter inanely – as she was prone to doing – after a thrown request towards Wilson for a cup of tea and "One of those little cakes with the strawberries on them, please."

Wilson, with obvious reluctance, dropped his rag and moved to fulfil her order. "You mean a fraisier?"

Violet beamed. "That's the one." Then she turned back to Draco. "They've always been my favourites, I think."

Draco flickered his gaze up from where he'd turned back to his book. His mother would have deemed him rude to so ignore a guest and customer in preference for literature – but then his mother wasn't there to scold him. Neither was Eloise, for that matter. "I know."

"I always get them. It's my Friday treat."

"I know."

"What're your favourites? Éclairs, by any chance?"

Slowly, Draco lowered his book. "Not hardly. What would make you consider such a thing?"

Violet glanced down at the table before her, her smile growing almost shy and _definitely_ un-Pansy-like. Then, with slow deliberation, she reached towards the handbag resting beside her feet. "Just because. I thought that might have been what you meant when you said… last week, I mean…" Violet paused, dropping her gaze to the small box she'd extracted and placed upon the table before her. One of Draco's boxes, he saw, and likely from one of her many visits before. It still bore the green ribbon and everything. "Maybe I'm just assuming because of the job listing?"

Then she held out the box, as though in offering. Draco felt the sodden weight of it like a stone in his gut.

 _Really? That's really what she took from our previous conversation?_

All of it, the job listing, the eclairs, Draco's foolish mention of both a week before. He should have expected Violet to leap upon the supposed opportunity that he'd unwittingly presented.

"Are you really not interested in… in dating?" Violet had asked at the time.

How the subject of dating had even arisen, Draco didn't know. For all that she was unlike Pansy, Violet somehow possessed the means of twisting a conversation to her devices with disconcerting resemblance to Draco's old friend.

It had taken him a moment to gather himself and reply. His first instinct was to turn on his heel and retreat to his kitchen – not in flight, but simply as a decision to ignore the need for a reply at all. If Draco had learnt anything in his time, it was that putting up with what he didn't want, didn't enjoy, or felt uncomfortable enduring wasn't worth it. Even if a slight in etiquette was perceived, he was done with playing to others needs. He'd been done when he'd finally been freed of all charges and taken himself to France nearly eight years ago.

But he hadn't. Not because Draco particularly liked Violet – because he didn't, really – nor because he'd felt any obligation to Pansy's memory. The simple fact of the matter was that he'd known that to leave the question hanging would be to provoke further pursuit from the persistent young woman. Enough was enough.

"My interests lie elsewhere," Draco had said, and hoped Violet understood the unspoken preference behind his words. Then he'd continued. "For instance, at present, I am in search of an apprentice. My schedule doesn't allow for consideration of other engagements."

Violet had stared at him. Then she'd nodded slowly, as though understanding. And then she'd left, and Draco had been hopeful that such was the end of their endless interactions.

Apparently not. Apparently the girl had mistaken the meaning of _that_ statement, too.

At that moment, sitting across from his oblivious, unwelcome companion, Draco regarded the box. He blinked slowly, closing his book. "You baked an éclair," he said. A statement, not a question.

Violet nodded.

"To apply for the position as my apprentice."

Another nod, more eagerly this time.

"Even though you have never expressed interest in baking prior to this instance beyond eating sweets."

Violet laughed. She actually laughed, as though Draco had made a joke. From the corner of his eye, Draco saw Wilson pause briefly in the act of pouring Violet's tea. _He_ understood that laughing at Draco was a definite No.

With slow motions – it had to be slow, for otherwise Draco would have likely simply risen to his feet and disregarded the encounter entirely – he reached for the box. The lid flipped open and with deliberate expressionlessness, Draco regarded its contents.

It certainly wasn't an éclair within.

Maybe it was an attempt at one, but what resulted was something that looked more like a gingerbread Honey Jumble. Where was the choux pastry? Where was the lightness, the fluffiness, the exquisite filling of cream or something grander, the perfect decorations to cap the top and the glistening spread of icing?

It had seemed like such a good idea at first. For whatever reason, it had struck a chord in Draco, and he felt the urge to act upon it. A change was needed, he;d felt; after nearly six years of owning a pâtisserie, he needed some kind of change. Something felt… missing. An absence, the likes of which Draco could neither see nor properly discern. He hadn't even an inkling of what it was, except that the thought of gaining an apprentice seemed to dampen the feeling of discontent that had been slowly building within him for months now.

An apprentice. Draco wasn't a teacher, didn't _want_ to be a teacher, and ideally would find someone who needed little by way of actual teaching itself. A partner would likely be better company sought after, but…

Draco didn't share. And he could barely work with Eloise and Margaret; the thought of a second pâtissier, huffed up and entitled in their perceived superiority, was more than a little distasteful.

So it was decided upon. Draco would put out a posting for an apprentice, and before even an interview was offered, he would request the delivery and receipt of 'the best attempt at an éclair that can be made'. Attempt, because Draco knew from experience that few enough people were truly successful with their baking. He'd taken years until he reached a level that met his perfectionistic standards even slightly.

George had posted the listing. He'd written it up, too, and though Draco tended to consider him something of a useless fuddy-duddy in his shop, if there was one thing George was good with it were personable impressions. Draco wouldn't claim as much aloud, but he doubted he would have been capable of transcribing such an approachable listing as George managed, and not only because he was far from a fair hand at using computers. Some things of the Muggle world Draco understood while others…

He'd received responses. Seventeen in total that had actually fulfilled his demands for baked goods delivered to his doorstep. Draco had expected as much; even in the small town of Merrington as he was based, he knew that word of his pastries was renowned. It likely had something to do with the website that George had spent nearly a whole week constructing – and doing a surprisingly good job of, too – and Draco knew that guests of the town had begun to visit his store as a Merrington 'must see'. There was a certain satisfaction to be had in that.

Draco saw the éclairs. Or the attempts at éclairs, rather. He saw, he tasted, and he discarded the majority of them. Too dense, too sweet, the pastry too thin or not light enough. A poor choice of flavour combination or simply poor presentation. Draco considered acceptable presentation absolutely necessary; what else would draw the eye of a hungry customer? Really, some people must truly be blind to the proper perfection of an éclair.

Violet, it would seem, was one such person.

Regarding her Honey Jumble éclair, Draco pressed his lips together. He didn't want to be cruel to the girl; deliberately cruelty, teasing, and bullying, was a thing of the past. There was something quite aversive about overt cruelness, Draco had found, after being subjected to over a year of it himself. He knew he was blunt to the point of tactlessness, and that he was selfish in pursuing solely what _he_ wanted, but to be deliberately cruel? Draco wouldn't do that.

Unfortunately, there was little other approach that Draco could take to the situation besides bluntness. Closing his eyes briefly, Draco shut the lid. "Miss Lovett, I think we may have reached something of a misunderstanding."

Violet laughed again in what was more of a giggle. "Miss Lovett. It sounds so strange, I –" She paused and her smile faded slightly. "What do you mean by that?"

Lips pressing together once more, Draco straightened in his seat. "I don't think you're suitable for the position of my apprentice."

Violet blinked. "What?"

"It is extremely long hours, _early_ hours, and hard work in the majority of those hours," Draco continued. "I don't believe the position is what you're looking for."

Mouth opening in a little 'o', Violet's frown rose and rapidly deepened. "But… you haven't even tried my éclair."

 _And I likely won't,_ Draco thought but didn't say. He usually didn't much care about being tactlessly direct, but Violet seemed to require wearing kid-gloves to be let down gently. "Pastry making is an art, Miss Lovett. It takes years of time and dedication. Can you honestly say you're prepared for such an undertaking?"

Violet's frown had slipped into a pout. She plucked at the ribbons on the box. "You could at least _try_ it," she muttered petulantly.

 _Merlin, but she's so young_. Draco gave a mental shake of his head. Maybe he should just put it out there? Maybe he should be as blunt and direct as ever. Violet's visitation to his pâtisserie may wane as a result, but the impact would hardly affect his sales. A fraisier a week was a small price to pay for his patience and sanity.

Still, it would be just a little awkward. Draco wasn't sure if even he was quite up to letting Violet down completely. He'd once been an amateur too, and though not quite as bad as the Honey Jumble, he recalled his first real attempt at an éclair. It had been far from perfect.

He was at an impasse.

Blessedly, distraction came in the form of the shop's tinkling bell. Violet glanced over her shoulder instinctively. Wilson paused briefly in step as he made his way to their table, tea and fraisier in hand. Draco drew his attention towards the entrant, though more in an attempt to latch upon any kind of escape than for true interest. Except that, when he did, he found himself staring.

There were some people in Merrington that reminded Draco of those from his past. Violet was a sugary sweet version of Pansy, and that was as far as the similarities extended. A woman who always came in on Saturday mornings to pick up a single apple croustande bore a striking resemblance to his own mother but for the fact that Ms Williams smiled and actually seemed to feel it.

Jonathon Spivel was a tall boy who looked nothing if not a cousin of Draco's old friend Blaise, even down to the casual, joking swagger he wore like a well-worn jacket. It was strange, had been a little disconcerting at first, but Draco had overcome his discomfort long ago. The girl who reminded him of a certain Hufflepuff from his schooling years. The old man who he'd sworn for a moment was a Death Eater he'd once known until growing to rationalise that simply because the man was surly didn't mean he was Dark. So similar and yet different.

Countless people were strangely familiar, and it had taken Draco a long time to convince himself that, oftentimes, those familiarities weren't all that similar at all. That he saw what his mind impressed upon those strangers in a mirror of a past he'd been forced to leave behind him as much as he'd chosen to. That there was no Pansy, or Blaise, or Narcissa Malfoy, and certainly no Death Eaters in Merrington.

It was a harsh reality, but one Draco was growing to accept. When the man stepped through the door, however, dressed in jeans and shirt so utterly, simply plain themselves it was almost a sin to fashion, he forgot about his self-imposed commitment entirely.

Maybe it was the hair, a dark, shaggy mess that hung into his eyes. Maybe it was that he was short – or at least shorter than Draco – and such was something Draco had always been smugly aware of. Maybe it was simply the way he carried himself, the casualness of his step, the almost obliviously curious air he assumed as he stepped inside Draco's store.

Maybe it was all of that or none of it, he didn't know, but for whatever reason, Draco was speaking before he realised. "Potter?"

The man turned his gaze towards him, and instantly Draco felt like a fool. It wasn't Potter. Of course it wasn't Potter. The hair was the same, maybe, but the man wasn't even wearing glasses. He was short, it was true, but he was thinner than Potter had been when Draco had last caught sight of him beneath the _Daily Prophet_ 's headlines. Granted, that had been years ago, but still. The faintest of shadow touched his cheeks in a way that the clean-shaven Saviour never would have worn. And though there was the casual comfort in himself, the almost oblivious distraction, the man didn't sniff and preach of that entitlement as Draco was _sure_ Potter would have.

The past caught up on him sometimes. That was all it was. Still, it was disconcerting.

The man himself stared at Draco with momentary surprise for his blurted words. He and Violet and Wilson all, for that matter, though Draco didn't spare the latter two a second thought. His attention was solely upon the intruder – for intruder he was. Draco knew just about everyone in town, and that man was _not_ a townsman.

Then the man smiled. Just slightly, a half-smile, but it was a smile nonetheless. And Draco didn't stare – or at least not for Potter-related reasons. "Hello," the man said as he eased the door closed behind himself. He glanced towards Wilson, then Draco. "Would one of you be… Mr. Malloy?"

He stepped slowly into the room, almost hesitantly, and as he did, Draco couldn't help but study him. He studied him and with each passing moment catalogued the differences he identified.

The jaw was more square.

The nose was too straight.

Eyebrows too sharp and forehead too wide. No scar marred that forehead either, for that matter.

Even the way he dressed was different to how Draco knew Potter would have. And he knew. Everyone knew. Draco had seen evidence of Potter's fashion sense many a time in the papers over the years. Granted, such evidence hadn't been apparent for years – Potter had 'gone under' in a way unnervingly similar to how Draco had himself – but so much wouldn't possibly change.

Or it shouldn't, anyway.

"That would be me," Draco said, and he rose to his feet. Usually he wouldn't bother with such niceties, but any escape from the pouting Violet and the awkward conversation to come was a relief. "What do you want?"

The man paused in step. It was only then, as he stalled and swapped the box in his grasp between his hands, that Draco noticed the box at all. Which could only mean… "Is that how you greet all of your customers? It's a miracle you have any at all."

Draco twitched. He knew he was glaring even before he actively felt the tightening of his eyes and the curl of his lip. "And that is of concern of yours how? Should you have reason to comment upon my business, then I assure you, I'd be more than ready to hearing it."

The man cocked his head slightly. He regarded Draco with a slight frown, as though studying him for a glimpse of something Draco couldn't discern. Then he shrugged. "If I'm going to be working with you then it might just. Yeah, maybe."

Draco blinked. He heard Violet make a sound halfway between a grunt and a cheep. Wilson's feet scuffled slightly on the tiles and Draco had the half-thought that he would scold the hell out of the boy should he drop that fraisier before he was locking his attention upon the intruder once more. He maintained his glare purely out of instinctive habit. "You seem very certain of yourself."

The man's lips tugged slightly, widening his smile. He had a good smile. Nice. Not like Potter's at all. "Call it a hope, maybe," he said. With an almost disregarding gesture, he held out the box as an offering. "I don't suppose I'm meant to hand over a resume at the same time, am I? The job listing was a little vague."

Draco's frown deepened. It wasn't _vague_. It was enticing. Mysterious. A lure placed to draw potential pâtissiers rather than blatantly stating the reality of what Draco wanted. He'd been told by Eloise in a way that was supposedly 'not chiding at all' that his first draft of the listing was just short of a slap in the face.

"No," Draco said, and he all but grabbed the box out of the man's hand. "Just the pastry."

"Right." The man cocked his head in the opposite direction, regarding Draco for a moment longer. Then he drew his gaze in a quick scan around the shopfront, skimming eyes over the counter and walls and up to the modest chandelier lighting overhead in a purely practical manner. Draco approved up to and until he noticed no apparent opinion accompanying any of the man's observations. The urge to twitch niggled at his eye once more.

"Well, then," the man continued after a moment. "I suppose I might hear from you?"

"Possibly," Draco said, fingers tightening slightly around the box. "Possibly not."

The man smiled again – that damned good smile and by _Merlin_ it was distracting. "Right. Possibly." He made another gesture towards the box as he half-turned towards the door. "I've left my name and number inside. I'm staying at the Chuckling Cupid, so if you need me…"

Then he shrugged, and that was it. Just a shrug, another passing glance over the shop, and he was stepping towards the door once more. The tinkle of the bell as he passed outside seemed to ring more loudly than usual in the silence he left behind him.

Draco stared at the closed door, watching with only the slightest shift in his gaze to follow the man as he passed the windows of the shopfront and disappeared from view. His finger tapped absently against the box, frown still affixed.

 _A name,_ he thought. _I should have asked for his name rather than just reading it._

Even as the thought arose, Draco knew that, had he a Time Turner, he wouldn't have gone back to change his actions. He had his own pride to maintain, and coddling to some intruder that likely couldn't cook a simple scone wasn't one of them. If the simplicity of the little white box was any indication, the éclair within was going to be just as unremarkable.

The presumptuous man with his presumptuous smile. Merlin, damn him, if it hadn't been such perfect timing, Draco would have likely disregarded his suggestion entirely.

"So you'll accept so random person's application cake or whatever but not mine?" Violet abruptly spoke up. Indignation was so thick in her voice Draco could practically smell it.

"It's an éclair, which is actually closer to a pastry than a cake," Wilson said absently, and Draco quietly approved of him for more than the fact that he chose that moment to set down the distraction of tea and fraisier. Draco had worked hard to instil accurate identification of basic baking terms into his employees; Wilson had never shown much inclination for learning, but at least he abided by those rules.

"I don't really care, to be honest," Violet said, voice rising. "Why is that man any better of a prospect than me? Why is his cake better?"

Draco didn't reply. In fact, he barely heard Violet's objections at all. His attention was turned wholly to the box in his hands and the pastry within – because it wasn't simple. It wasn't simple at all.

Raising his gaze once more, Draco glanced towards the window where he'd last seen the man. Three other prospects, he had. Three other eclairs that he would deem even mildly worthy of presenting in his shop. And maybe… just maybe he might have found a fourth. Of course, it would all depend upon how it tasted, but…

"Is just because I'm a girl? Is that why you won't consider me? Are you _sexist_ , Mr. Malloy?"

Closing his eyes briefly – and quietly blessing Wilson's murmured, "Um, both Eloise and Margaret are women, so…" – Draco turned towards her and closed the simple white box. It was time to put a stop to the little twit's impudence once and for all. Besides, he had a pastry to critique as only he could masterfully do so.

* * *

Violet had left. Mollified, as Draco had begrudgingly done his best to soothe her irrationally bruised ego, but left she had. In the empty silence of his kitchen, away from even the classical music that he constantly mulled to, Draco sat upon the sole stool in the entire expanse of his back room.

He wore his apron, because no one, regardless of circumstances, could enter without. He sat with a single plate and a single fork, the box that had held the éclair discarded. Of course it was. There was a certain protocol to be had to taste-testing, and Draco would be damned if he didn't abide by his own. It was his kitchen, after all.

The warmly glowing overhead lights were his only company. Wilson knew better than to come out the back when Draco retreated unless absolutely necessary. So Draco was alone – and staring.

The éclair was exquisite, to say the least. Puffed, perfectly long, the cream rich and fluffy and just visible, and the sheen of the chocolate icing so profound that Draco could almost see his reflection in it. Or he likely would have but for the sprinkled chips of caramel peppered atop.

It was a work of art, just as a pastry should be.

Draco didn't want to think well of the man. It was simply a matter of principle that made him reluctant; Draco never liked _anyone_.

He stared for a long, long time. At the plate, then the éclair. At the bin with its discarded box, then back to the pastry. He raised the fork, because nothing should be eaten with anything less than a dessert fork unless absolutely necessary.

He speared it into the éclair.

He paused for a moment to pry a piece loose.

And he took a bite.

It was soft. It was moist. The chocolate was rich and smooth, the cream thick and lathered with combined caramel and cocoa and that caramel… It was almost good enough to be 'Irish' caramel.

Draco paused as salty sweetness, smoothness and softness and the perfection of pastry, flooded his mouth. He closed his eyes.

Four. Maybe four possible apprentices. It was a secret relief that none in the town of Merrington were magical enough to hear Draco change his mind.

* * *

A/N: Hi! Thanks so much for reading this first chapter! I hope you enjoyed it. Please leave a review if you get the chance to let me know you thoughts, and I'll see you soon with the new chapter!


	2. Chapter 2 - Aperitif

**Chapter 2: Aperitif**

 _~Often as a glass of wine, this alcoholic beverage is offered to stimulate the appetite of waiting diners~_

* * *

The smell of hot bread baking, Draco had decided, was the best possible thing to awaken to.

He had little to do with Margaret Touhill. Their correspondence had begun when he'd arrived in Merrington with every intention of setting up shop and Margaret, as the only breadmaker in town, had bowed readily to the idea of combining their efforts and skills to mutual benefit. The result was that the older woman bustled into the bakery beneath Draco's flat at barely midnight every morning to crack the ovens alight and flood his rooms with the warm, homely scent of baking bread.

Drawing a deep breath, Draco blinked awake. It was still dark, because it was always still dark when he awoke. Leisurely sleep-ins, while always appreciated for Draco and his inclination towards moving entirely at his own pace, wasn't a habit conducive to working in a bakery or pâtisserie.

Draco didn't mind. Of all that had changed since his youth, early morning wake-ups wasn't one he objected to.

Reaching towards his nightstand, Draco fumbled for a moment for his wand. The silent alarm that always woke him at five o'clock, magical vibrations spun into ringing relief that only he could hear, wasn't unpleasant, exactly, but for the connotations of an end to sleep. A flick of Draco's wrist and the vibrations ceased their ringing in his head.

With a yawn, he pushed himself upright. Another absent flick of his wrist and the room sprung alight with magical illumination that spread like a dawning sun from the centre of his ceiling. The wide bed with its high mattress, puffed duvet, and just enough pillows to make Draco feel like the king he was, the wardrobe across the room, his dresser with mirror reflecting the sun-like rendition of his _Lumos_ Charm – all of it was neat and precise. Not a hair sat out of place and never was their the possibility of a discarded shoe to provide a trip hazard upon the floor.

Draco liked the things that he liked, and tidiness was one of those things. It helped that he'd long ago charmed his shoes to walk themselves into his wardrobe and coat to hang itself on the back of the door as soon as he stepped inside his flat of an evening.

His morning routine was a quiet affair, and Draco appreciated that quietness. It was familiar. Habit, and though he knew such habit would have been nothing short of horrifying to him in his younger years, he favoured it these days. Mindless drivel and lengthy, monotonous diatribes were a thing of the past – though Draco would always object to _he_ being the source of such diatribes.

Dressing more by instinct than conscious thought, Draco dragged on his black slacks and white chef's uniform, buttoning to his throat as he wandered into the living room. His _Lumos_ charm followed him, bathing the open-plan flat in false morning light; the white granite bench tops of his modest kitchen, the sleek leather lines of his lounge suite complete with Muggle television and all, the dining table that had never sat more than himself and only ever in the one seat. Always the seat facing the window, even if Draco so rarely looked out that window itself. He'd often thought that the flat was too big for just himself – and that moment had been an epiphany of sorts. Draco had _never_ considered that 'too much' was too much for him. The best had always been rightfully his.

But that had changed. Or at least it had dampened. It started with the end of a war that had endured silently for far too long, and then with a brief, explosive climax. It had started with the court cases and the accusations, with his father's sentence to Azkaban and his mother's house arrest. It had started when Draco made the snap decision to retreat to his family's lodgings in Paris' sixteenth _arrondisement_.

How he'd found himself as an apprentice pâtissier was something that Draco hadn't quite understood and couldn't wholly remember. In the midst of mindless revelry, an attempt to lose himself in the present to forget a heinous past – somewhere between the sex and drinking and dancing in too many foreign Wizarding nightclubs, Draco found himself appointed a master.

Maybe it was the temptation of the new that had drawn him. Or it could have been that baking pastry – the trivial but utterly and wholly delightful act of constructing something exquisite and delectable – was so far removed from war, fighting, and death that Draco was instantly smitten. Or maybe it was the sweet tooth that he'd always harboured, a taste Draco had inherited from his father and fought tooth and nail to hide as a 'character flaw' in his schooling years.

Draco didn't hide anymore. Or at least not in that regard.

Merrington had seemed the perfect solution to the unexpected bout of homesickness for British soil that Draco found himself assaulted with at barely twenty-two years old. A small town. A quiet, sedate, _non-magical_ town. Draco had never considered that to be anything but surrounded by magic would be a positive for him, and yet reality had forced him to reassess his understanding. Being the only wizard in Merrington was… nice. Even nicer that no one knew him.

Draco was something else in the small town of far southern England. He was some _one_ else: Dray Malloy, master pâtissier and owner of the blossoming business of _Anguis In Temptationem._ It might not have been what he'd foreseen for himself, but Draco was content.

And even if he couldn't use magic _all_ the time, self-imposed isolation allowed for certain liberties.

Wrist flicking and wand waving as he stepped into the kitchen, Draco fell to the ministrations of magic's invisible hands as they straightened his hair with a Charmed comb, his shirt and slacks of any hint of creased, and polished his shoes as they walked themselves towards him and tied onto his feet with expert fingers as he stepped into them. The stovetop sparked to life with another charm, and within moments – refrigerator opening, eggs bobbing out of their carton with single-minded determination and milk following in their wake – the smell of scrambled eggs was added to the aroma of baking bread breathing through the floor beneath his feet.

Sitting himself at his dining table, Draco directed another charm to his cupboards – plate and cutlery rolled out dutifully – and a further nudge to his stereo. The familiar tones of classical music rippled towards him in the name of Sir Thomas Beecham. Draco had always appreciated wit, and that Beecham wore such wit upon his sleeve was a credit to his name and nothing if not encouragement to partake of his music if Draco weren't already inclined.

To the sound of plucking harp strings and the mournfully delightful quavers of the violin, Draco ate his breakfast. Alone, as always. Watching the pre-dawn seep slowly towards light, as he always, always did. There was something comforting about such silence, something familiar and worthy of embracing as Draco had never considered as a younger man who'd revelled in the constant attention and awe of those around him. True, awe and appreciation would always be favoured, but it was less of a necessity now. Draco drank his fill of that from his baking.

Alone. Always alone. And even if he wanted company – which he _didn't_ – it was better to be without. The priority of bathing in magic in the mornings and evenings was one Draco wouldn't go without. Besides, Draco might be a baker but such didn't mean he particularly enjoyed _cooking_. They were, of course, entirely different things.

And that was to say nothing of cleaning. Draco liked cleanliness but the act of cleaning itself? He'd hired Wilson for that duty.

A bite of eggs and he shot a charm towards his refrigerator once more in an order for juice. Another, and he idly flicked the television on to riffle through the channels of early morning news. The murmur of newsreaders, a discordant contrast to Beecham's conduct, was soothing in its familiarity.

Another bite – a final bite – and Draco turned his regard to the four slips of paper that had been placed deliberately upon the table before him the night before, hitherto deliberately ignored. When he finally lowered his fork to his plate – and magic dutifully carried them both to the sink to begin scrubbing – it was to lift his glass of juice in both hands and consider each of the four business cards in turn.

Penelope McCartney. Young, up-and-coming. She knew how to bake a choux pastry, though lacked something slightly in her presentation.

Winston Bluha. Older, more experienced, and likely more set in his ways. His presentation had been impeccable, and the choice of his flavours… he had a talent, that was for sure.

Valerie Higgins. Middle-aged, long experienced in pastry-making but she was clearly eager to learn more. The nature of her decorations on something as simple as a traditional éclair had been commendable.

And Oliver Haighs. Draco still didn't like the man for his short, presumptuous introduction, but he had a skill for baking. In the barest glimpse of caramel and chocolate, Draco had seen that. It was almost a pity his éclair had been as good as it was.

Lowering his glass with a click, Draco dropped his elbows atop the table, linked his fingers and rested his chin atop them. He had a decision to make, and that decision would change everything. Everything, from Draco's pâtisserie to his lifestyle itself. He enjoyed working six out of the seven-day week, but the hours were long and he had little enough time to himself. Draco wasn't really influenced by Eloise's indirect suggestions that he 'get a life' but…

Draco's life was pastry-making. He knew that, had _become_ that. But something was missing, and he didn't quite know what.

Drawing his gaze between the four precisely placed business cards, Draco catalogued what little he knew of his for potential employees. Two were from out of town, he knew, and Penelope so far to the outskirts of Merrington that it was practically 'out' as well. But other than that, he had their eclairs. Their propositions by way of dessert.

All that was left was to interview each and decide which was worthy of the position of his understudy.

Four pâtissiers. Four potentials. Each would have their flaws, Draco knew, and he would most likely have to fire the one he chose after a time – that much he'd already resigned himself to. But the potential for change, for a difference…

Draco liked things to go his way. He always had, and the older he grew, the more he'd grown to accept that anything _but_ compliance by those around him was unacceptable. Draco had done his time as a pawn; he wouldn't endure it any longer.

Rising to his feet, his glass floating over to the sink to join the self-drying dishes and frying pan, Draco turned to leave his apartment. He had a morning of baking to undertake, 'Macaroon Monday' as Eloise dubbed it welling with the promise of food dye aplenty and the cloyingly sweet smell of baking sugar. And then…

Then Draco would meet his maker in the face of four potential ex-employees.

* * *

"I'm not saying it's a bad thing, but merely a suggestion. I truly approve of your methods so far, but choice of stylisation… I think it speaks a lot of a man, how he bedecks himself and his establishment, don't you?"

Draco regarded Winston Bluha over the width of his sparse desk, pen in hand and poised above his pad of questions and blank expanse of paper awaiting scribbled notations. He blinked slowly and Winston blinked back.

Then the man smiled. Rosy cheeked and kindly faced, he actually smiled. Draco abruptly hated the man.

The interviews had proceeded that afternoon with far less success that he could have hoped for. Draco had known they would all have their flaws; he'd prepared himself for that.

What he hadn't been prepared for was Penelope's endless string of questions in a voice that grew more and more nasally with each uttered syllable. He hadn't been ready for Valerie's smothered insinuations that, "We both know, Dray, that it would do this town proud if you hired another resident, eh? We both know that, yes?"

Draco hated being called 'Dray'. George was bad enough and only endured because he was begrudgingly recognised as being an adept hand at customer relations. Valerie Higgins had no such excuse.

And now Winston Bluha, with his leaping into 'helpful' suggestions of how the pâtisserie could be improved. About how _Draco's_ shop could be better. It was almost as though he considered himself a partner already – which he wouldn't be, even if Draco had decided to hire him.

Pressing his lips together for a moment, Draco glanced down at the blank expanse of his paper. "Well, I'm sure you understand, Mr. Bluha, that such changes to the store would not be undertaken –"

"Not yet, Mr. Malloy," Winston interrupted him, and Draco felt his eye twitch. It was a foolish man to interrupt his potential employer. "Maybe not yet, and I understand only too well that you wouldn't want to take any big suggestions from someone you barely know. But that could change in future."

The man chuckled merrily, a veritable Father Christmas for his ample girth, greying beard and round, flushed cheeks. He laughed as though they shared a joke rather than both bore witness to a criticism.

Draco liked him even less for that.

Regarding the portly man with a hooded gaze, Draco slowly lowered his pen. _I shouldn't be blunt_ , he reminded himself. _He might be the best of a bad lot. I've only got one other option so I shouldn't be_ –

"Mr. Bluha, I believe we might have something of a disparity in opinions. I, for one, have no intention of changing the stylisation of my pâtisserie, nor my hours of operation, nor even, dare I say, my suppliers of castor sugar for your 'far superior' source." Draco sniffed before he could help himself. "To consider such changes upon the horizon would be both presumptuous and unrealistic. You can see yourself out."

For a moment, Winston didn't move. His merry smile remained affixed – until it slowly began to fade. He stared as his mouth flopped over in surprise. "I'm sorry?"

"Our interview is concluded. You may see yourself out."

"But –" Winston paused, a confused frown crinkling his forehead. "Now, wait just a minute, I –"

"The door, Mr. Bluha," Draco said, gesturing pointedly to the entrance to his office. "If you could leave it a fraction wider open upon your exit it would be appreciated."

For a longer moment, Winston didn't move. Then, with frown still creasing his brow, he rose hesitantly to his feet. "So I'm not…?"

"I don't believe this position is right for you," Draco said. Then, because the man's face crumpled and Draco wasn't _entirely_ heartless, he sighed and continued. "I am most certain that another pâtisserie would benefit far more from your experience and suggestions. As it is, I seek only an apprentice of sorts rather than one so… progressive as yourself."

It wasn't much, but the shift from desolate back to confused and even considering was something, at least. Winston hesitated a moment longer before skirting around his chair and making for the door. He paused in the doorway, sparing a final glance for Draco. "Thank you for your time, Mr. Malloy."

Draco opened his mouth for a moment. The urge to dismiss the man once more rose and was only restrained by the invisible presence a certain redheaded assistant likely manning his counter barely a room away. Strange, how Eloise seemed to have assumed an almost scoldingly maternal role, especially given she was nearly four years his junior. Even stranger that he had once thought her a quiet, clumsily subdued girl. How she'd grown to all but embody his mother at times was uncanny.

Swallowing back his instinctive response, Draco nodded. "And yourself, Mr. Bluha. I wish you all the best in your future pursuits."

He wasn't sure if it was a good thing or not that Winston left with a smile playing upon his lips.

Shaking his head, Draco dropped his gaze back to the pad of paper before him. Picking up his pen once more – it wasn't as comfortable as a quill, but he'd learnt to accommodate it – he slashed a line through Bluha's name. Then another. And another, just for good measure. Then he sighed and slumped back slightly in his seat.

Barely an hour he'd been interviewing his potential employees, and Draco felt exhausted in a way that a morning of baking wouldn't find him. And he _still_ had one more. Oliver Haighs was… Well, his interview would likely be the most ambivalent, and not the least of which because Draco had some very pointed questions to ask the Potter-lookalike. He'd been thinking about those questions all morning, in fact.

Raising a hand to his forehead, Draco briefly massaged his forehead. The thought of gaining premature wrinkles wasn't as horrifying to him as it had once been, but encouraging that possibility would never be high on Draco's priority list. With a final smoothing of his frown, he blinked his eyes open and placed his pen down upon the scored pad of paper. Haighs was due in less than fifteen minutes; those minutes were more than enough time for a cup of tea, especially when the brewer had the aid of magic at his disposal.

Within seconds, Draco was sipping from a strong, steaming mug as he sketched Oliver Haighs's name onto a new sheet of paper. His office – barely large enough to warrant the term, and little more than an appropriated locker room dolled up for private purposes – was quiet but for the scratching of his pen. Even the gentle ticking of the clock above the door was more of a feeling than a sound. The pale walls, the panelling that emulated the style of his shopfront, the rich, antique wood of his desk and bookshelf – even the laptop that Draco barely used because Muggle technology still eluded him much of the time – was all sleek and refined, just as Draco liked it.

And Winston Bluha said he had no style?

Draco was frowning down at the swirling dregs of his tea when a knock sounded from the doorway. With slow deliberation, he set his teacup into the conjured saucer, straightened his pad of paper and slowly took a hold of his pen once more before turning towards the entrance. Towards the intruder, because in his mind, Oliver Haighs was still an intruder into Draco's town.

The man stood in wait alongside the half-open door, small, damnable smile playing upon his lips. With his simple clothes – again, why the boring simplicity? – and the mess of his dark hair as untamed as the Saturday before, his resemblance to Potter was as profound as Violet's was to Pansy. The similarities – and the differences, too.

Draco catalogued it all in the seconds that the man stood in silent wait. He'd indeed thought about Oliver Haighs and their upcoming interview quite a lot over the past days. And as he'd decided that morning, Draco had one particular question to pose before anything began with definitiveness.

"Mr. Haighs, was it?" He gestured to the chair across the desk from him. "Take a seat."

The man paused for just long enough to seem deliberate. Draco stared at him with steadfast control of his facial features to ensure his annoyance for the delay didn't make itself apparent. Then, still smiling just slightly, Haighs nodded briefly before stepping into the room.

Silence met his entrance. It followed him as he took a seat and persisted even through a frankly unnecessary sequence of fidgeting. In deliberate dispute, Draco remained as immobile as a statue, and he stared.

So similar. Almost, _almost_ as much as Violet to Pansy. Except for the nose, and the chin, and the forehead and…

But still. Unnerving. When the man finally finished his comfort-seeking, Draco folded his hands upon the pad of paper before him and cut to the _fucking_ chase.

"By way of introduction, Mr. Haighs, I believe we must clear the air on one particular issue."

The man across from him raised his eyebrows slightly. His smile remained affixed and Draco would be damned but it was getting to him. The urge to scowl was unshakeable. "By all means. What issue would that be?"

Draco pressed his lips together. He tapped his pen once, twice, then again. With hooded regard, he tipped his chin just slightly. "How long, exactly, have you been wearing a Second Skin?"

Now the man smiled. He truly smiled, and Draco really must be damned because it was a good smile. He'd never noticed it before, but… maybe it was an effect of the Second Skin? He hoped so. The Second Skin Glamour was like that; favoured after the war, and particularly by heroes, veterans, and convicted criminals that still held possession of their wands, it offered a skewing of features often just enough to present an unfamiliar façade. Draco had worn one for years. Dray Malloy was more than simply a name; it was a shortening of his nose and a slight darkening of his pale skin. It was a rounding of his chin, a slight distancing of his eyes. Little tweaks, little changes, but enough to convince most that he was 'someone else'.

Harry Potter wore a Second Skin. Everyone knew it, even if no one had seen it specifically.

The so-named Oliver Haighs stared at Draco for a long moment. Then, with his smile hardly hidden at all by the tuck of his chin, he glanced downward and shook his head. "I'd wager longer than you have, Malloy." Then he laughed, so quietly and so briefly that Draco almost missed it. "Really, Dray Malloy? I suspected but…"

Draco's eye twitched. He'd known it. He'd _known_ it had to be him, even after his immediate internal denial the day before. He might have hoped otherwise, but this man, this Second Skin, was nothing but a glamour worn by the Boy Who Lived Twice.

Must Potter ruin his life time and time again? If only Draco truly believed that it had been ruined at all; it would certainly make his accusation far simpler.

"What are you doing here, Potter?" Draco said curtly.

Potter raised his gaze. His smile still played upon his lips, but it lessened slightly into something less joyous and more comfortably satisfied. "We're ridding ourselves of our aliases then, I take it?"

"You're making assumptions."

"Well, you left to door wide open for assumptions to be made."

Draco felt his lip curl just slightly and smothered the urge to outright scowl. "Oliver Haighs," he said, and couldn't quite keep the mockery out of his tone. Or, more correctly, he forced it _into_ his tone. Draco hadn't had the need for open mockery for a long time. "What kind of a name is that?"

"Better than Dray Malloy," Potter replied, leaning back slightly in his chair. "You may as well have just kept your name as it was, you know."

"There's nothing wrong with having pride in my heritage," Draco said, hearing the almost-lie in his words.

"I never said there was."

"You insinuated."

"You mean you _heard_ an insinuation."

Draco tapped his pen sharply. "You didn't answer my question."

Potter's lips pursed, quirking slightly to the side. He shrugged. "Call it an appropriation from down under."

"Down under?"

"Australia," Potter clarified.

"I'm not a fool," Draco all but hissed. He couldn't help himself; civility was growing increasingly difficult to manage. He hadn't been so thrown from his norm for a long time, and seeing Potter, even behind his Skin, was decidedly disconcerting. "I meant why."

"You could have just asked 'why'."

"I did."

"No, you didn't."

"Potter, if you make me repeat myself, I'll blast you out of here faster than you can draw your own wand."

Potter's lips twitched slightly wider with his damnable smile. "Says the pâtissier to the ex-Auror trainee."

The laughter in his voice was positively horrifying. Raising his hand, Draco waved at the door with a flick of his wrist. It slammed rather louder than he'd intended, but such was far from unwanted. Draco found he quite liked the effect.

Potter snapped his gaze over his shoulder. When he slowly turned back to Draco, his smile had finally disappeared. Draco wasn't sad to see it go – he _wasn't_ – and even allowed his own to spread briefly.

Only to lose it as Potter spoke. "You've got one of those new Spell-Assist holsters, I take it?" With a moment of fiddling, he shucked up the sleeve of his right arm to display the pale length of his own wand starkly contrasting his skin. Holly, eleven inches, with a phoenix feather core. Draco knew the facts, just as everyone else in the Wizarding world did. The interviews with Potter himself after the war, not to mention the ode to his disappearance years ago, made sure of it.

With a sniff, Draco disregarded the question. "Answer my question. Oliver Haighs?"

"So it is a question?" Potter asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Potter –"

"It's my inspiration," Potter said, overriding Draco's retort just as he felt his hackles rise. "Is that what you wanted to know?"

It wasn't the half of it. Draco had a sea of questions, and most of them indignant, demanding, and just short of desperate. Potter could very well break Draco's fragile peace with his presence, and though Draco wasn't expressly disallowed to reside where he was, his preference for privacy had been long coveted.

It took him a moment to identify, but Draco hesitantly realised he was nervous. Not scared, but certainly apprehensive. Taking firm control of the situation was his only means at quelling that apprehension a little.

"You stole someone's name?" he asked.

Whether Potter perceived Draco's apprehension – hopefully not – or was simply swayed by the firmness of his words – the more likely, in Draco's opinion – hardly mattered. He replied easily enough with another shrug. "I didn't steal some other man's name."

"But you just –"

"It's the name of a store, if you would. Or a chain of stores, I suppose." Potter paused long enough for Draco to get a hold of his disgruntlement for being interrupted _again_ before, "A chocolaterie."

His words hung suspended between them for a long moment, until Draco couldn't help but snort. "You took the name of a chocolaterie?"

"Still better than Dray Malloy," Potter rebuffed.

Draco twitched. Again. He'd not had such difficulty with withholding his frustrated ticks in such a long time that he'd almost forgotten he had them at all.

That realisation abruptly grounded Draco. Suddenly, he was made starkly aware of where he was, _who_ he was, and the reality of the situation. That he was a young man not yet thirty but well past the history of his schooling years and the argumentative youthfulness he'd once possessed. That this was _his_ interview for a position in _his_ pâtisserie. Draco was in charge, in control, and the seemingly casual address of the man before him shouldn't ruffle his feathers so drastically.

Even if it was disconcerting. Potter might be wearing a Second Skin, but the person beneath should have been the same. It _should_ have been – so why did Potter seem so different? Mellowed, almost. Quieter, and not just in his voice. Draco wasn't sure what to make of that fact, but it was… definitely disconcerting.

Abruptly, Draco decided. "Take off your Skin."

Potter's eyebrow – the eyebrow that wasn't wholly his – arched. "Beg pardon?"

Even those few words, the casual politeness of them, were strange. Draco needed to at least _see_ Potter as he was supposed to be. He gritted his teeth briefly, calmed himself, before repeating, "Your Glamour. Take it off."

"Um… why would I do that?"

Raising an own eyebrow, Draco managed a slight smile. "Are you scared, Potter? Worried about revealing your true face?"

"Honestly?" Potter dropped his gaze briefly to his lap and where his fingers linked one another. "Yeah. I am, actually."

Draco's mouth opened. Then it closed. Then opened it again, only to close once more. He didn't like this. It was wrong. Potter wasn't nearly how he recalled him, either from their schooling days or from the papers in the scant interviews since. A 'prime example of a modern wizard', the _Prophet_ had once dubbed him. 'A leader of the war recovery effort' and 'a proud Gryffindor stepping from the protective walls of Hogwarts to better the world'. It had all been a little sickening to read, if Draco were to be honest with himself. And he was _always_ honest. Or mostly, at least.

Which was why he allowed the murmur in the back of his head to agree to Potter's sentiment. It was somehow easier when Potter had done it first; it truly was daunting to consider dropping the Glamour that Draco had held magically affixed for six long years.

Swallowing his unease, Draco attempted to still the tapping of his pen as he hadn't even realised he begun flicking. "Well, I can hardly conduct a proper interview with a self-declared imposter."

Potter raised his gaze. "Beg pardon?"

"Would you speak properly, please," Draco sighed. Half sentences had always vexed him.

"What?"

Draco closed his eyes briefly. Maybe Potter really was a little addled. That would explain the difference in him, even if it did overlook the almost joking taunting he'd been pulling almost since he'd stepped through the door. Draco could only deduce that Potter was a puzzle.

Deliberately tapping his pen this time, with a firm stab right atop where 'Oliver Haighs' was printed, Draco affixed Potter with an unblinking stare. "Are you being deliberately obtuse or simply stupid?"

Potter blinked. "I was under the impression the interview wasn't going to happen."

"And why would you think that?"

"Because I'm me and you're you."

If anything could have incited Draco to proceed with the interview, it was that – that Potter 'assumed' it wouldn't happen at all. Draco damn near hired him on the spot, just to prove a point. "Don't attempt to understand my process, Potter."

"You're process?" Potter echoed.

"If you still have intentions of working in my pâtisserie," Draco continued, ignoring Potter's hint of a smirk, "then drop the Skin."

For a long moment, Potter didn't move. Then he twitched a briefly gesturing finger. "What about you?"

"What about me?"

"You too. Drop yours too."

There wasn't any reason Draco had to, and yet as soon as Potter posed the not-quite-dare, he knew he would. So much for nearly a decade of maturing; the desire to avoid being outdone was unshakeable. So when Potter raised his hand to his face and wiped in a downward swipe to clear the Glamour, Draco couldn't help but do so too.

It was a gut-clenching experience. Horrible, even, for he hadn't so unveiled himself in years and it felt decidedly uncomfortable to do so now. And yet Draco's horror was dimmed somewhat by the person he abruptly saw before him.

Potter was different. He truly _was_ different to how he'd been, as though the years of his absence – had it really been nearly seven years? – had made him into a new man. Not distinctly older, necessarily, but certainly different. The familiar features that Draco had studied in anger and something not quite hatred in the past realigned themselves; his slightly crooked nose, the smoothness of his brow, the pale lines of his scar upon his forehead and the curve of a jaw not quite as wide as Oliver Haighs'. His face was thinner than Haighs', too. Thinner than Potter's had been before, for that matter, and the athletic physique of an Auror-in-training had thinned right alongside it.

Had he been sick? Was that what rock he'd disappeared to after the unexpected decline of his Auror offer that had rocked the Wizarding world years ago? Not that Draco cared, but it was as unnerving to notice the differences as it had been to see Oliver Haighs and his Potter-like features.

As the silence stretched between them, Draco grew slowly aware of the fact that, as he stared at Potter, Potter stared right back. The feeling of being exposed without his magical mask to hide behind was disconcerting in a wholly different way. Draco smoothed his expression out of necessity more than composure; it was something of a struggle.

"You no longer wear glasses?" he said by way of distraction.

Potter's lips tugged slightly down at one side. "They were sort of distinctive."

"They were appalling."

"And my father's."

"Still appalling."

Potter blinked slowly, and for a moment Draco thought he'd touched a sore spot. But then he smiled, and damn him but it was the same smile as Haighs'. "Maybe. I guess. So."

"So what?" Draco asked.

That smile widened. Draco had always hated that Potter had a charismatic smile. Even worse was that he'd never seemed to realise the effect of it. The idiot. "Are you actually going to interview me or not? Am I going to get the position?"

The tapping of Draco's pen began once more. He was silently satisfied that it seemed to catch Potter's attention, though only minutely. For himself, Draco's attention was focused upon the situation at hand.

The interview. The position.

Draco wasn't a fool. He knew himself well enough to understand that, for Merlin knew what reason, he'd all but made a decision already, and it had precious little to do with baking experience or éclairs. Still, such a decision couldn't be openly admitted. Or at least not straight away.

"I have questions for you," Draco said finally, "to deduce whether you are an appropriate fit for the position."

Potter tipped his head slightly. With an offhanded gesture, he dragged his fingers through the mess of his hair. It was a little longer than it had been last time the _Prophet_ had done an article 'in his memory'. Less groomed, and not at all as maintained as Draco's own. That it wasn't bad… Draco didn't want to consider how he felt somehow comforted by the return to Potter's school-age image.

"How many?" Potter asked.

"Questions?"

"Yeah."

"As many as I deem fit to pose," Draco said. He liked the sound of that. Control. Order was finally being reinstated.

Potter huffed in something between a sigh and a laugh. "Can I have a ballpark?"

 _Tap-tap-tap_ flicked Draco's pen as he considered. "Four."

"Only four?"

More definitively, "Four."

Potter nodded. "Alright. Shoot."

"What a poor turn-a-phrase," Draco couldn't help but drawl.

Surprisingly, Potter smiled in something like commiseration. "I know, right?"

It was an odd moment, not of camaraderie but of something almost like it. Draco shook himself from the moment as soon as it arose. Dropping his gaze to the pad of paper before him, he began. "Why do you bake?"

Potter gave his little sigh-laugh again. "What kind of a question is that?"

"Potter, don't mock my –"

"Your process, right," Potter finished for him. "I got it." His fingers grazed through his hair briefly once more. "I guess I always have?"

"Baked?"

"Cooked. Baked. Whatever you want to call it." Potter shrugged. "Call it a family tradition my aunt and uncle instilled in me."

"Cooking and baking are far from being the same things, Potter," Draco said, jotting notes unnecessarily. As if he wouldn't remember every moment of the conversation, even without the assistance of the pensieve he'd inherited from his grandmother. "Do you enjoy it?"

"Baking?"

"Potter, this is going to be a very long discussion if you repeat –"

"Sorry," Potter said, and that simple word was enough to stifle Draco's indignation in its tracks. He'd been interrupted _again,_ but Potter had apologised? It was almost inconceivable. "I know, it's your process. Do I like it?" He paused for a moment, drawing his gaze aside. "I didn't use to."

"And now?"

"Obviously," Potter said, and his voice was in such an unexpected drawl that Draco was momentarily paused. He shook himself loose of his stupor with a brief struggle and jotted out another redundant sentence.

"What induced you to pursue a career in baking?"

"What induced _you_?" Potter retaliated.

Draco's lip curled. "This isn't my interview, Potter."

"I know. But I'm still curious." He smiled slightly. "Other than the fact that you've had a sweet tooth since you were a kid, I mean."

Draco's fingers froze in their false notations. Did he just…? Did Potter know about…? He dropped his gaze with a flicker of annoyance that had long ago been disregarded. Pansy-bloody-Parkinson had made the mistake of letting that little fact slip in Draco's fourth year. At the Yule Ball, as he recalled it only too well. Just because he'd readily finished _her_ dessert as well as his own didn't mean she had to be such a cow.

That Potter remembered when that rumour had leaked, for it could only be from such a rumour that he knew… Draco wasn't entirely sure how he felt about that.

"Answer the question," he said shortly, hating that he sounded even slightly mulish.

Potter was smiling as he replied. Draco could hear it in his words. "I guess you could say I was inspired."

"By Haighs?"

"In part." Potter shrugged. "They make good chocolate; what can I say?"

"That's feeble reasoning, Potter."

"Did you ask for a good one or the real one?"

Draco grunted. He supposed that was the inevitable truth. He didn't believe that Potter's sudden 'inspiration' was the whole of the reason, but he would leave it at that. He scribbled another note. "So why choose to come here? Why Merrington?"

"Why did you?" Potter asked.

Draco sighed. "Potter, I swear to Merlin, if I have to tell you –"

"Not your interview," Potter finished for him. "Right. I got it. You want the honest truth?"

"Believe me, I'm breathless to hear it," Draco said, the sarcasm not quite wholly sincere. Was he interested? Of course he was. Draco wouldn't do himself the disservice of denying it.

Potter dropped his gaze to his fingers once more. He threaded them one way then the other in an entirely unnecessary act. Stalling, Draco assumed. He was definitely stalling. But he did eventually reply, a second before Draco nearly spoke to prod him into doing so once more. "I guess… London's too big for me. The whole world is, really. Stepping outside of it all…" Potter paused. He seemed to consider for a long moment before finally raising his gaze to meet Draco's.

There wasn't a hint of his smile anymore. Not that Draco was sad to see it go, but he noticed. That, and the fact that Potter seemed to have stripped back another Skin that was something different to the magical kind this time. It was stark, just a little sad, and far too honest for Draco. He couldn't look away.

"Magic is wonderful," Potter finally said, his voice low. "It saved me in more ways than one, Malfoy. But the Wizarding world?" He shook his head slightly, maybe a little regretfully. "I don't think there's all that much of a place for me there anymore."

Draco disagreed. He disagreed so fiercely that the urge to blurt out a biting denial of Potter's words nearly tripped from his tongue. _Potter_ had a place. Of course he had a place; the Saviour of the world, even eight years after that saving, would always be welcome. Hell, he could knock upon any door in Wizarding Britain and expect to be given dinner and a bed for a night, and he'd be right in assuming.

 _Draco_ was the one who didn't have a place; he'd been made starkly aware of that fact throughout the horror of the post-war trials. He'd understood it as his father was taken from him and his mother reactively took herself away as well. Even his apprenticeship as magical pâtissier in Paris hadn't been his. Not really, even if his master had offered him a permanent position.

Draco was other. Something else. Something between the world of magic and Muggles, and yet not quite a part of either. Potter didn't understand what such isolation truly meant, and yet…

His words resounded. It might have been wrong, but they resounded nonetheless.

For that reason – and because of a certain éclair that Draco could swear he still tasted upon his tongue – Draco decided. Or, more correctly, he decided more wholly. Truly, the decision had been made long before that moment.

With deliberate preciseness, Draco placed his pen perfectly beside his pad of paper. He folded his hands upon the table before him and regarded Potter as Potter himself dragged his attention back from wherever it had drifted. Potter hadn't been one to drift dazedly in the past; that was certainly different, too.

"Alright, Potter," he said. "I've heard enough."

Potter's eyebrows rose. "What? That's it?"

"Wasn't that what I just said?"

"No questions about my baking? What's the essential difference between plain and self-raising flour?"

Draco clicked his tongue. "Are you an amateur, Potter? Don't be stupidly basic."

Potter smirked, his detachedness rapidly fading. Draco wasn't sure if he was happy to see it go or not. "What about a resume, then? No list of desserts I can make with a modicum of competency? No questions as to my area of specialisation?"

"Potter –"

"You didn't even ask where I've studied. What makes you think I've studied at all?"

"Potter, you –"

"In fact, a salted caramel éclair might be the extent of my abilities. Have you considered that?"

Draco rose to his feet in a jerk. "Potter, shut the bloody hell up." Shaking his head, he made a performance of sweeping around the desk, reaffixing his Second Skin with a swipe of his hand as he went. "For once in your life, attempt and silence yourself and follow me."

Potter chuckled behind him as Draco strode from the room. He chuckled, but he did follow. Draco was silently satisfied for that fact.

What he wasn't sure of was whether the murmured, "Yes, sir," spoken in very distinct sarcasm was quite so good. On principle, Draco chose to ignore it and led the way to his kitchen palace.

* * *

Cupboards opened and closed almost of their own accord. Surfaces were swept with a drifting hand, draws tugged open and even the oven doors pried awake like blinking eyes.

Draco twitched.

The gentle click of steps resounded off tiled floors. Murmurs spoke not to him but still heard echoed off the walls. The central counters were skirted, the trays on display studied.

Draco fidgeted in place. He wouldn't speak. He wouldn't.

From the doorway into the kitchen, one above and one below the saloon doors, the paired eyes of his assistants stared widely. George was whispering something in hisses too quiet to discern; Draco could hear it like the niggling of an annoying mosquito. Eloise was thinking too loudly, and Draco could hear that, too.

 _There's a stranger. In the_ kitchen _. A stranger in_ Anguis' _kitchen!_

It was annoying. So annoying. And yet not quite so annoying as Potter's wandering.

Sighing louder than was really necessary, Draco folded his arms more firmly across his chest. "Are you quite done with your inane pottering?"

Potter didn't glance over his shoulder at Draco's words. That was infuriating – or at least it mostly was. It was a little interesting as well, because through Draco's affront he discerned that Potter didn't hear him. Potter, for reasons that couldn't quite be explained but Draco implicitly understood, was circulating the room with the apparently instinctive need to touch every surface. To look inside every cupboard in determine what lay within. To poke his head into the cool room and release a wash of chilling air and to murmur words like, "Makes sense, I guess," and, "Good size for maybe five dozen."

Draco understood that. In some ways, that understanding only infuriated him further. In others…

It was very curious.

"Haighs," Draco tried again, though still to no reply. "Haighs, if you would pull your head from the clouds for a moment."

Still no reply. Draco _tsk_ ed. He shot a glance towards Eloise and George. The latter, as expected, retreated into disappearance immediately. Eloise, on the other hand, met his gaze from over the top of the saloon doors. She frowned slightly, questioningly, then gestured with a glance towards Potter. Draco knew the meaning of that glance, because he'd spent far too long in Eloise's company to be able to read her little quirks and unspoken words. _Is he the one you've chosen?_

Draco didn't reply to that. Not because there was no appropriate reply, but because the truth of the matter was somewhat difficult to swallow. Even more so because Potter was bloody ignoring him.

With a jerk of his head, Draco shooed Eloise away. It took three tries – _three_ – but eventually, with lips downturned objectionably, she retreated into the front of the shop. Draco could hear the murmured exchange of his assistants from just out of sight but chose to pointedly ignore them.

Instead, he crossed the distance of his clean kitchen – blessedly clean, for George had apparently managed to complete his morning chores – towards Potter's side. Potter was even then inspecting the array of cooling macaroons in a rainbow of colour waiting to be completed.

"Are you being deliberately rude or is it just part of your character, Potter?" Draco asked lowly.

"Hm?"

For a moment, all Draco could do was close his eyes. What in Merlin's name was he getting himself into? "When attempting to appear proficient and capable of following orders before a potential employer, you'd do well to respond when called."

Potter glanced at him briefly. "Sorry 'bout that," he said, though he didn't seem apologetic in the slightest. He turned back to the macaroons a moment later. "I take it Monday is your macaroon-making day?"

"Your powers of deduction are exemplary," Draco said.

"You're a bit of a traditionalist, aren't you, Malfoy?" Potter said, ignoring the sarcasm. Frustratingly and maybe a little unexpectedly, too, for Potter had _never_ ignored Draco's mockery in the past.

"To what do you refer?" Draco grumbled.

Potter straightened as he began pointing to the macaroons. "Vanilla, chocolate, lemon, coffee, raspberry, coconut, pistachio … you don't branch out much in flavours, do you?"

For the briefest of seconds, Draco _might_ have been mildly impressed. Maybe, and only a little, because anyone who knew anything of macaroons knew how to identify their flavours based on colour. What was surprising was that _Potter_ knew; for all his silent acceptance that Potter could possibly bake, Draco hadn't expected that.

His momentary surprise faded to indignation a split second later, however. "You've a criticism?"

"What?" Potter glanced towards him from the macaroons once more.

Tipping his chin, Draco nodded to the doors. "If you've an opinion on how my kitchen is run, Potter, you can get out."

"It's just an opinion, Malfoy."

"No one's opinions matter in the baking process but my own."

Draco thought he'd pushed him too far. Briefly – and with something that was almost satisfaction – he thought he'd caused Potter to snap. Potter stared at him, not the hint of a smile upon his lips, and he didn't even blink. If anything, the slight rise of his eyebrows was openly critical.

Except then he laughed. Surprisingly – and infuriatingly – Potter laughed. Shaking his head, he turned back to the trays. "Right. Your process. Got it."

Draco was beginning to regret speaking those very words barely half an hour before. "If you've a problem with it –"

"I can leave," Potter finished. He nodded. "Got it." Then, without another word, he turned and began another slow rotation of the kitchen.

Draco frowned at the back of Potter's head as he walked away from him. It was a bad idea. No, it was a terrible idea. Draco shouldn't do it. He shouldn't. A change was a change, but _this_ degree of change? This was far too much.

Except that it was already done. Something in Draco knew he was already turned down the one-way street with a firm decision. More the fool him.

"Are you marking your territory, perhaps, Potter," he said, just loud enough to be heard over the distance between them. Not that it would truly matter if it echoed further, even with the use of Potter's name, but for some reason Draco didn't much want Eloise and George to hear.

Potter glanced over his shoulder. He regarded Draco for a moment, and Draco wondered if it would ever not be strange to see him without glasses. Even wearing his Second Skin, Draco _knew_ that Potter lay beneath, and that made it all the stranger.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Potter asked.

"Please refrain from smearing your hands over every surface, if you would," Draco clarified.

Potter glanced down to where his fingers rested lightly upon the counter at his side. He shook his head slightly. "First you force me into an apron just to enter your kitchen that's not even baking at the moment, and now this…"

Draco didn't reply. He wouldn't even if he'd wanted to. Potter's words hadn't truly been directed towards him. Or not until, "You're still a prat, you know."

That warmth welling in Draco's chest should have been concerning, but Draco ignored it. Thinning his lips, he raised an eyebrow. "And you'd know all about that, wouldn't you?"

"Takes one to know one, you mean?"

"Are we resorting to schoolyard verbal attacks now?" Draco rolled his eyes. "How juvenile."

Potter grinned. It was an actual grin, unlike any that he'd worn since Draco had seen him. Not the smile or the smirk, nor the thoughtful, contemplative softness of lips. Draco had seen it before, years ago, but never directed towards him. Stupid Potter and his stupid smile.

"You really are a prat," he said.

Snorting, Draco half turned to lean back against the counter behind him. "I've never been able to stand you, Potter."

"Hm," Potter hummed thoughtfully. "And yet you're hiring me."

"Merlin only knows why."

"Even though you hate me…" Potter trailed off as he wandered down the length of the kitchen once more. Draco could only stare after him. He barely even felt Eloise and George's curious gazes where he knew they'd appeared around the saloon doors once more. He had more important things to think about – like that Potter was wrong.

That was the worst part of it. For all the age-old animosity that had existed between them, Draco didn't hate Harry Potter. He hadn't hated him for a long time.

Not since the war.

Not since Draco's trial where Potter, and Granger, and even Weasley had stood testimony for him.

Not since Potter had disappeared seven years ago and not a word but for speculation had been breathed of him since.

Aloud, Draco might admit that Potter – somehow, incredibly and unexpectedly – was a capable pâtissier. He might begrudgingly admit that he was the best pick of the quartet of possible apprentices that had been chosen from the mix. He might even grow to admit that, with this strangely quieter and certainly less objectionable Potter, potential for disaster and explosions, magical and otherwise, were likely far diminished.

All such reasons and more Draco might claim drove his inevitable decision, but only one would he never voice. And that was that Draco was intrigued; Potter, _the_ Harry Potter, who had by some speculators died and others simply vanished into thin air, had appeared upon his doorstep with a knack for baking and a surprising readiness to adorn an apprentice robe that he'd likely grown out of years ago.

Draco was truly intrigued. Somewhere within him, that need for change, that muttering voice that bespoke readiness for the new and different, quelled into momentary approval.

It was decidedly unexpected. That it was Potter that so triggered it even more so. But then, Potter had always been as much a catalyst as a part of the reaction. Always.

"You're being disgustingly presumptuous for one who doesn't even know if he has the job yet," Draco finally said, watching as Potter paused, bending to peer beneath one of the benches. Why he felt the need to look under the sink, Draco didn't know, even if he recalled doing exactly the same thing himself when he'd first scouted the shop.

"I don't think so," Potter replied, his voice echoing slightly from the hollow of the cupboard.

"And why is that?' Draco asked.

"I'm your last interview today, right? Have you invited anyone else to take a look at your kitchen?"

Draco opened his mouth to retort. Unfortunately, no words arose that wouldn't make him sound like a blithering idiot. How Potter somehow reduced him to his teenage years and teenage ineloquence, Draco didn't know.

He bit his tongue for a moment and blessed the fact that they truly were no longer in school. It made accepting momentary defeat slightly easier to swallow. "I take it that's acceptance?" was all he said.

"Of what?" Potter replied, not even bothering to turn as he drifted further down the kitchen once more.

"Don't be obtuse, Potter."

Potter laughed. He didn't turn, but he laughed nonetheless, and at Draco's words rather than at him specifically. That spark of warmth – a horrible and discomforting warmth – rose within Draco once more. "Yeah. I guess I am," Potter said.

And that was that.


	3. Chapter 3 - Appetisers

**Chapter 3: Appetisers**

 _~The foreplay of meals, ideal appetisers serve to urge the diner into the mood, inducing excitement and stimulating taste buds for the meal ahead~_

* * *

"So that's him?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"Him. He's the one that's going to be your apprentice?"

"Eloise, if you didn't already realise as much from the moment he stepped into my kitchen, you're far less intelligent than I give you credit for."

"You credit me with intelligence?"

"Very little, I can assure you."

"So this guy. Haighs, right?"

"If you'd like."

"What does that mean? No, it's fine, actually. If you're going to glare at me like that then I don't want to know. You like him?"

"I do not 'like him'. Bloody hell, Eloise, don't make assumptions."

"Sorry."

"He's an employee."

"Right."

"And a pain in the ass, but competent enough in baking."

"O…kay?"

"Why are you looking at me like that?"

"I –"

"Stop it. I dislike your smirking."

"Sorry. It's just… I'm happy."

"Happy?"

"That you've found someone you like enough to be your apprentice."

Draco sighed. Sometimes there was no reasoning with people. Eloise could choose to believe some misguided fondness on Draco's part if she wanted to. She'd likely continue to should Draco persist with denials, because she was strangely stubborn at times.

Draco Malfoy did not _like_ Harry Potter. That he was a suitable candidate for employment, though… Draco was yet to determine that.

* * *

Macaroon Monday had been a tradition almost as long as Draco had owned his pâtisserie. Of course, such didn't mean that Monday was the only day macaroons were made; fluctuations in sales and necessity dictated that the need for stepping outside of the expected routine arose upon occasion.

But Draco liked routine. Which was why he liked Mondays. With Sunday as his only day he ever closed, stepping with expectation into the new week with an understanding of expectation was… comforting.

Except that particular Monday, Draco wasn't think of macaroons as he descended the stairwell from his flat. He was hardly thinking of baking at all.

The early morning air was crisply chilly, if not quite cold. Even so, Draco's breath plumed before him in a hazy cloud as he skirted his shop from the back door passage to his flat around to the front entrance. The wide street that stretched down Boardwalk was empty, the shops lining the road dimmed but for night-lights and the illumination of street lamps.

Such was always the way of a morning. Only the grocers at the far corner showed any signs of life, and that was minimal at best. Draco had never quite understood why it remained open twenty-four seven; Merrington hardly needed such lengthy hours for their general goods shopping.

He paused outside his shop, hands stuffed into his pockets, and turned to face the street. It really was empty, utterly abandoned of all life. Fidgeting, drawing one hand from his pocket barely a moment after he'd thrust it inside, Draco squinted through the poor light to his watch.

Ten to five. If Potter was late, there would be hell to pay.

Draco huffed to himself, another soft plume puffing from his mouth, and inhaled deeply. The scent of Margaret's baking was his only company; the familiar, mouth-watering aromas of rising yeast and crispy crust, flour churned with butter and salt and needed between practiced hands. Draco had never been one much for breadmaking – though his own time as an apprentice had seen him producing more than his fair share of loaves – but he appreciated the skill. And the smells. Always the smells.

It would have been almost a perfect morning, except for the fact that Potter was –

"I'm not late."

Snapping his gaze sidelong, Draco caught sight of a single figure striding down the road from the vague direction of the Chuckling Cupid. He didn't need to be able to discern more than the vague outline of him, the jacket and dark slacks and incessant muss of hair, to know who it was.

"As good as, Potter," Draco said flatly.

Potter drew alongside him, and in the proximity Draco could make out the thermos in his raised hand, smoking just slightly. That, and the pointedly raised eyebrow Potter regarded him with. "I left the pub at a quarter to five."

"Your point being?"

Potter sighed, dropping his gaze to his feet briefly with a slight shake of his head. Draco refused to feel belittled by his weary exasperation. On the first day of work, a new employee should arrive with absolute punctuality. _Better_ than punctuality, ideally.

He was drawn from his thoughts, however, as Potter dug into his pocket and extracted a Muggle phone. With a click, he flared the screen to glaring brightness. Draco squinted with a scowl as Potter turned it towards him. "Nine minutes to."

"Nearly late."

"But not."

"Potter, I'm your employee at present, and if I say so, it is so."

Potter's eyebrow twitched higher. The slight skewing of his features with the Second Skin, the angular line of his brow, made it all the more apparent. "Is this going to be a thing now? 'Cause that would be kind of shit."

"What, that I'm your employer?"

"That you're being a dictating prat."

Why Potter's words actually gave Draco the urge to smile he didn't know. He wasn't sure he ever would know – or that he even wanted to. "It's your choice, Potter. Quit if you want, though that would be a piss-poor attempt at a first day at a new job."

Potter frowned. He pursed his lips in that way he always had, drawing them down and to the side. That much at least hadn't changed with his Glamour. "I didn't say that."

"You were thinking it."

"Actually, I wasn't." Potter took a deliberate sip from his thermos. "Are we actually going to start today, or just stand out here talking?"

"Both," Draco said, because it felt could to deny Potter's blatant assumption. "Stipulations need to be set."

"Oh hell, here we go…"

"One," Draco continued, ignoring Potter and raising a finger. "No magic."

"No shit," Potter said, taking another sip.

"I mean it, Potter. If you can't control yourself, then leave your wand outside of my shop."

"What about wandless magic?"

Draco stared at him and refused to give him the satisfaction of glaring. Potter's eyes were far too innocently curious. "Shut the fuck up, Potter."

"Yes, sir," Potter replied. Draco still couldn't decide whether he hated it when he said that or not.

"Two," he continued, leaving the thought for later consideration. "You bake what I tell you to."

"How unexpected."

"What?"

Potter was definitely smiling, even if Draco couldn't quite see it around the thermos. "That you'd want everything done your way."

Draco sighed with more world-weariness than he truly felt. "Of course, _Potter_. It's my shop."

"I had noticed that, as a matter of fact."

Draco ignored that, too. He raised a third finger. "And finally –"

"That's the last one?"

" _Finally_ ," Draco raised his voice slightly, "in my patisserie, you shall be Oliver Haighs only. Do you understand? And you will refer to me sir or Mr. Malloy at all times. Especially when around the Muggles."

"Not Dray?" Potter asked. Yes, he was definitely smiling. Or smirking. Probably smirking.

Draco closed his eyes briefly. He truly had never really liked his pseudonym; it had simply been in an effort to avoid slipping up that he'd chosen the name so similar to his own. He was rapidly beginning to regret the choice.

"Sir," Draco repeated. "Or Mr. Malloy." He paused until Potter nodded. It took a while; Potter didn't seem to realise he was waiting for the obvious. "Any questions?"

Slowly, Potter lowered his thermos. Surprisingly, he wasn't still smirking, but instead appeared nothing if not thoughtful in his regard as he stared at Draco. "Dozens, actually."

Draco sighed. "Potter, we hardly have the time for –"

"But I won't ask," Potter interrupted him. Draco would have to do something about that 'interruption habit' he'd repeatedly exhibited. "You're entitled to your secrets, _Mr. Malloy_." Then, with a wave of his hand, he gestured towards the pâtisserie. "Please. Lead onwards."

Draco could have rebuffed his presumptuousness. Whatever they'd been in the past, _Draco_ was the one in charge now. It was his shop, after all. His shop, his kitchen, his business and _he_ was the one in charge of his employees. Being one of those employees now meant that Potter should abide by his word as though it were lore.

Something inside of Draco, some part of him that still carried the flame of rivalry from their schooling days, urged him to do just that. Yet it was only small. A candle, even, and against the greater fire of his current life, his baking, his growing curiosity for just what in God's name Potter was doing in Merrington, it was barely worthy of consideration.

They weren't boys anymore. They weren't schoolkids battling for superiority. They weren't even fighting soldiers on opposite sides of a war.

Draco understood that then, as he stared at Potter for a long moment. He understood it because he felt it, _knew_ it innately, and because he saw it in the way Potter didn't glare at him. The way he prodded and teased but didn't truly seem inclined to fight.

Draco wasn't the only one who had changed. He wasn't the only one who had found a new life in the years after the war. Nodding to himself, Draco thought he might just be belatedly realising that.

"Alright, Potter," he said, turning towards the front doors of his pâtisserie. With a tap of his finger and a twitch of his wrist, the wand strapped to his forearm unlocked the magical security system. He wasn't so removed from the Wizarding world as to rely solely upon Muggle technology, after all. "Follow me. This morning shall be a trial of sorts. Ask questions for clarification if need be, but by Merlin, don't be a fool. If I have to stop what I'm doing because you can't find a bloody wooden spoon..."

* * *

"Please, in Merlin's name, tell me you know how to use an electric mixer."

"Malfoy – sorry, _Malloy_ – I'm the one who grew up with Muggles."

"I said to use my second name when in company, Potter. You sound like a fool otherwise when no one's around to hear you."

"Thank you. I've always aspired to be a jester."

"Shut up."

"Margaret's just over there, by the way. Is she not considered company? Or have you told her about –?"

"Potter, I swear to God if you don't shut up…"

"Yes sir."

Potter always smirked just a little when he said 'sir'. It was a different kind of smirk to the one Eloise wore, and the hint of his smile always showed through.

Damn Potter and his damned smile. He was, Draco decided that first day, utterly insufferable, and stubbornly persistent to boot. How Draco would make it work he didn't know, and yet…

Draco had his own well of stubbornness to draw upon to. He wasn't giving up that easily.

* * *

Tuesday morning found Draco bent over the counter with gaze fixed unblinkingly upon his bowl of egg whites.

Cake monstrosities weren't a commonality of his repertoire. Draco baked them as needed and upon request. Oftentimes, many such requests were swayed to alter into what Draco himself considered to be more suitable desserts. Most residents of Merrington happened to agree with him; he was the master pâtissier, after all.

In short, Draco baked French desserts. It was what he wanted to bake, so he did. French, and traditional, and recurring of the recipes he knew best and knew worked. Like his _dacquoise_.

Many people believed that it was a fiddly dish. That it took a gentle hand, and time, and that the end result might not even be worth the effort. Those people would be wrong. It wasn't hard. Not to Draco.

It wasn't all that fiddly, either, yet even if it was, Draco liked the more delicate, refined and precise work. It was such precision that had him working on immaculate pastries rather than the explosions upon the plate that he'd seen some chefs capable of producing.

That morning, the _dacquoise_ was his priority. Not even six o'clock and he was firmly grounded in his baking for Mr. Arnold's midday pick up. A 'tea party', the man had claimed when he'd called barely ten minutes before. Draco's open ours weren't exclusive of such early morning requests.

He mixed. He churned hazelnuts in the food processor until their rich scent rose to mingle with Margaret's bread. He beat his egg whites for the meringue until the glorious peaks climbed up the sides of the bowl.

Cream of tartar.

Spoonfuls of sugar.

A pause and the gentle folding of chopped hazelnuts into the immaculate mix.

Draco loved that kind of baking. He doubted he would have thought himself capable of it in his younger years – cooking and baking had always been a duty of the house elves, after all – but that had changed. There was a certain sense of control to be gained from such production, from creating something wholly his own. Something beautiful, refined, and an overwhelmingly appreciated assault of every sense.

Draco could lose himself in his baking; the gentle folding of the meringue as _only_ gentle folds rather than mixing, the dolloping onto a lined pan waiting to be filled, the delicate smoothing of those dollops into something remarkable. Draco had always very much lost himself in it until –

Laughter sounded from across the room. It wasn't loud, but in the kitchen of but three people and the accompaniment of only thrumming ovens and grumbling processors, it was a sharp contrast and starkly heard. Draco paused. He glanced over his shoulder.

Across the room, at his own counter spread with flour and heaped with half prepared dough, Potter had briefly paused and turned to Margaret. The older woman, of an age with Draco's mother, as it were, had stopped alongside him with a tray of steaming rolls propped on her hip. Margaret was something of a doughy roll herself; nearly as wide as she was tall, her round cheeks and round face, stubby little hands that worked their own kind of magic and rolling gait, she was nothing if not a butterball. Or such was how Draco had always seen her. She was a good worker, too. Committed, and as dedicated to her baking as Draco was his own. Margaret rarely talked to even George unless necessary, let alone Draco, and such was how Draco liked it.

And yet she'd paused alongside Potter. When she should have been working, should have been all but finishing up for the morning, she'd paused to murmur something to him almost beneath her breath. And she was chuckling. Potter, murmuring back, chuckled in reply a moment later.

Draco stared for a long moment. He couldn't quite help himself. Potter was… to say he was a curiosity would have been in keeping with Draco's assumptions and yet entirely inaccurate. There was more to it than that, and Draco had questions. So many questions, and even more since yesterday, their first day working together, had passed with such startling smoothness. Draco would never have thought he and Potter could work together in the same vicinity, and yet somehow…

Draco wanted to ask where Potter had learned to bake. He wanted to ask _why_ he baked, and what could possibly have possessed him to come to Merrington. Was it because he'd known Draco was there? But then, how was such a possibility enticing? They'd not spoken to one another in nearing a decade. What possible draw was there in seeking Draco out?

Or had he retreated with the same intentions Draco had himself? The intentions that Draco hadn't even realised he'd had until years after his withdrawal from the Wizarding world – the isolation from a world that didn't truly fit him, a people that didn't accept him, a history that wouldn't ever leave him. But then, Potter wouldn't want that, surely. He was a celebrity. Witches and wizards _adored_ him, even after years of only the memory of heroism. Draco had long ago grown indifferent to such observed fame, but it had once irked him terribly. Why would Potter want to leave that?

And more importantly, most nigglingly important, where had Potter disappeared to for the past seven years?

Draco wondered all of that. He'd wondered that and more the previous day as he'd curtly directed Potter around his kitchen and given him the list of required tasks to be filled that day.

"If you have questions, be sure they're worthy of interrupting me before posing them," Draco had said.

Potter, staring down at the list of duties and recipes and scheduled necessities that required fulfilment with blank-faced attention, had glanced up at Draco briefly. That blankness had slipped momentarily into something like exasperation. "I'll be sure to do that, _sir_."

Draco still didn't know if he liked Potter calling him 'sir'. Just as he still wasn't sure how the bloody hell they'd ended up in such a situation.

Himself.

And Potter.

Working together. Working together in _Draco's pâtisserie_.

The very fact that Potter baked at all was almost impossible to reconcile. Attempting to overlay the image of the Boy Hero, the Saviour of the Wizarding World, and the world-loved image of what every sane wizard should strive to attain in his year as an auror trainee and _only_ trainee – it just didn't match up.

Draco expected it to fall through. He'd expected Potter to be truly dismal at baking, even if his éclair had been admittedly adequate. He'd expected them to argue as they had at every opportunity in the past, expected disaster and chaos and to write-off that Monday as a lesson learned. In the week since the interview with Potter, Draco had asked himself countless times just what the hell he'd been thinking when he'd hired him.

He hadn't changed his mind, though. Hadn't and didn't, because Potter wasn't a dismal baker. Draco's had looked for an apprentice that he hadn't really wanted for the inadequacy of an apprentice, and hadn't being given it. Far from it, in fact, Potter seemed to know exactly what he was doing. They didn't even argue; for that matter, they barely spoke at all. There was no disaster or chaos, and Monday wasn't a write-off. If anything, that morning had been more efficient than Draco had managed in –

Well, not ever, of course, but something very close to it.

More to his surprise, Draco found himself losing himself in his baking as he always did. He called out his usual orders to Eloise and George when they arrived, and even spared a handful for Potter, but he worked as he always did. And Potter didn't get in the way of that at all. If anything, he fell into his designated work with the same kind of focus Draco found himself falling into so often. The unspeaking, unblinking, attentive focus solely upon what he was doing with his hands.

George didn't possess the capacity for such a thing. Not even Eloise seemed able to. But Potter…

Surprising? It was a damn-sight more than surprising. Even more so when, at just past lunch time, when Potter's shift drew to an end, he'd paused just inside the pâtisserie door and turned to Draco. Potter wore the sweat and grime of the morning, the expected smears of flour and equally expected weariness, like a comfortable jacket. His apron was slung over his shoulder, and his hand was already upon the doorhandle when he looked Draco's way.

Draco could have ignored him. He could have proceeded to sit at his usual table, drink his tea as always, and focus upon the newspaper with Merrington's unremarkable spread of stories as he always did. Why they felt the need to mention the sighting of a Basking shark that wasn't even off Merrington's coast but a whole hour further north Draco didn't know. Reporters would grasp at anything these days. Pansy would likely have killed him for such a thought, but wouldn't deny her own frivolity in reporting.

But Draco didn't ignore Potter. For all that the past suggested he should – had to, by necessity – he glanced up. Their gazes met, and for a handful of seconds, Draco barely saw the Second Skin Potter wore. It was disconcerting to meet his eyes without glasses, but surprisingly not bad. Not bad at all.

Potter opened his mouth. He paused for a moment longer, closed it, then opened it again. "Am I fired?"

Draco blinked. "What?"

Potter stared at him. His hand plucked idly at the apron upon his shoulder but otherwise he appeared almost bored. "After today. Am I fired?"

Draco had to take a sip of his tea. It was that or risk making a fool of himself in blurting out a question of how Draco could _possibly_ fire him after such a surprisingly, astonishingly successfully day? He sniffed, glanced into his teacup as though momentarily distracted, then drew his gaze back towards Potter's. "You know how to make a macaroon, Haighs."

Potter's lips tugged sideways. "You just realised that? After I made dozens already today, you're only just realising that now?"

Choosing to ignore the sarcasm of Potter's words, Draco sniffed again. "Be sure to arrive with more punctuality tomorrow. I dislike tardiness."

Briefly, almost too briefly, Potter frowned thoughtfully at him from across the span of the shopfront. Draco was detachedly aware that Eloise watched them from the counter. Then Potter snorted, shook his head, and smiled. "Sure. Whatever you say, Malloy." He left with another shake of his head, striding from the pâtisserie in the direction of the Chuckling Cupid with gaze falling to his feet.

He disappeared in seconds, but Draco stared at the glass for a long pause after. He thought. He considered. He marvelled that such a thing was possible and wondered for just how long it could last. Draco wasn't a fool; he'd grown to understand that nothing was attainably _good_ for any extended period of time. Not without significant effort on his part, at least. The pâtisserie was an example of that effort.

Draco just had to decide how much effort he'd be willing to put into Potter to keep things 'good'.

"Eloise," he said absently.

"Yes, sir?"

"If you keep staring at me like that, I'll put you on scullery duty."

"Sorry, sir," she said, though she hardly sounded sorry at all. Strangely enough, Draco didn't find he cared all that much. For reasons he didn't want to pursue too ardently, he couldn't quite shake the image of Potter's half-smirking smile from his head.

On Tuesday morning, Potter arrived at exactly the same time he had on Monday. Draco chided him again and Potter rebuffed him once more. The hour since had flowed just as smoothly as it had the previous day.

Draco felt himself frowning slightly as he watched Potter speak quietly to Margaret. There was something just vaguely charismatic about him; if Draco was to be honest with himself, he would have to admit that much. Just as he would admit that, despite his years of fame and that casual affability, Potter didn't appear to be wearing his entitlement like a kingly robe. He spoke easily enough with Margaret, but not with the skill of one used to being the centre of attention and revelling it. Draco knew how that felt; his schooling years had found him as little else when he could manage it.

How much had changed. How much he'd wanted it to change.

At the same time, Draco studied Potter. He watched him for the first few hours that first day, and he saw that Potter knew what he was doing. That he had a head for baking – a surprisingly steady head – and that he seemed thoroughly engrossed in his work. That he truly became 'Oliver Haighs, the apprentice pâtissier', rather than the unshakeably famous wizard that he was. Or had been.

The baker in his was evidence in his silences as he worked. It was apparent in the way that he would stare with the single-minded intent that Draco always felt himself, when he bent over his bowl of churning butter meld or squeezed dollops of mixture onto a tray. Even more surprisingly, Potter took orders. He actually _allowed_ orders to be given.

"I want them smaller than that," Draco would say of those very dollops as Potter lined them neatly onto his tray.

And Potter would shrug. "If you'd like," he'd reply, and he would make them smaller. That time, and all times thenceforth.

"The decorations atop the miniature cakes are to be symmetrical," Draco had said with a frown as he saw the cluster of fondant flowers in a decidedly asymmetrical pattern.

Potter had glanced at Draco, then back at his cakes, and shrugged again. "Okay."

"Add vanilla extract. It makes it better."

"If that's in your recipe, sure."

"Chop them finer than that, Haighs."

"But you don't want it processed?"

"Not processed, chopped. Just finer."

"Okay."

And finally, "That's not the appropriate sequence of procedure for that recipe," Draco had said as he'd paused in his own baking to regard Potter with a sceptical eye.

Potter had stopped in his own baking. He hadn't appeared annoyed by Draco's words. He hadn't even one instance that Draco had pulled him up. It made Draco wonder just what kind of instructors he'd had that he simply took critical corrections on his chin without complaint. It was certainly a change from their schooling days.

"You want me to change the procedure even if the end product is the same?" Potter had replied, and Draco wasn't even sure if cynicism touched his voice.

He'd frowned anyway, turning aside. "Even then," he'd said.

And Potter had done it. As he was told, even if it reached the same result, he'd done as Draco had told him to. That last request – an admittedly unnecessary one, at that – Draco would admit only to himself had been a test. A test to see how far he could push Potter, to determine if the unnecessary could be done.

And Potter had done it. Despite being perfectly competent in another sequence, he'd done as instructed. That fact made Draco only more curious. It was just so unlike _Potter_.

As he watched Potter speak to Margaret that Tuesday morning, Draco couldn't help but wonder just what it was. Why did people fawn upon him? For truly, he wasn't _that_ charismatic. He was attractive, Draco was objective enough to acknowledge, but he lacked the straight-shouldered and self-possessed impression that outfitted those who knew it of themselves. Had Draco not known him, he would never have believed that Potter was a world-famous wizard in his own right.

It was baffling. Almost as baffling as his disappearance had been. Draco certainly had questions pertaining to _that_.

But for now, those questions were unimportant. For now, Draco's main priority was his pâtisserie and finding an apprentice that was as much an almost-equal colleague in terms of competency and yet didn't rub him too much the wrong way. That is could be Potter that would fill such a roll was nigh unbelievable, and yet…

"Haighs," Draco said shortly, his voice echoing across the room.

Potter turned. Margaret did too, and as she did so, she seemed to shake herself from her momentary pause and continue in her rolling gait across the room, tray in hand. Margaret was more of an independent partner than a subordinate, had been for as long as they'd been working together, but for whatever reason, she seemed to defer to Draco in just about every regard.

Potter continued to stare. "Yes, sir?" he asked. The lack of submissiveness in his tone was almost striking.

"Finishing those _religieuse_ at some point today would be ideal."

"Malf – Malloy, it's not even six o'clock yet."

Draco felt the urge to smirk at his slight slip. He'd nearly slipped himself with Potter's name several times the previous day; it was somehow validating that he wasn't alone in his near err. "Do you intend to spend all day making choux pastry buns, then?"

"Would you object to that?" Potter asked.

"In terms of efficiency? If that's all you could manage, then yes, I do. And you'd be fired."

Potter's lips quivered. For a second, Draco thought it might have been with indignation. Then his gaze dropped briefly and he saw it for what it was; a smile. Potter's damnable smile. "You know, this whole job instability thing could be considered harassment."

"Job instability?" Draco folded his arms slowly. "Potter, it's your second day."

"And thus more unstable."

Rolling his eyes, Draco turned back to his _dacquiose_. "Get back to work, Potter."

Draco had nearly lost himself in his meringue once more when Potter finally replied. That in itself was surprising; how easy it was for Draco to simply forget his once-rival, if even for the more important focus of his baking. "Is this going to be a regular, is it?"

Draco glanced briefly over his shoulder. "Excuse me?"

Potter was still turned towards him, regarding him curiously. "I bake exactly what you tell me to, when you tell me to, and that's it?"

"You're an employee, Haighs. It's what you do."

"So no liberties?"

"Two days, Haighs. Or not even. You've been here for not even two days."

Potter nodded. "Yes, and in the first few days of employment it's important to establish boundaries."

Draco regarded him shrewdly. He made an image, did Potter, feet planted and thumbs hooked into his apron's front pocket. An image entirely comfortable in the uniform that Draco had given him only the day before. Almost infuriatingly, it suited him. Just as unexpectedly, the curious cast to his expression that lacked animosity entirely seemed comfortably worn.

With a point of his spatula towards Potter, Draco arched an eyebrow. "You follow my rules. Mine, until I say otherwise."

"Well, that's hardly any fun."

"Potter –"

"Watch it, Malfoy," Potter interrupted him, and with a tilt of his head gestured towards the saloon doors into the kitchen. A second later, George's voice rung out in merry greeting. Another second, and he and Eloise both were all but falling through the doorway.

Draco pressed his lips together. He had more he wanted to say to Potter – about boundaries and expectations and 'doing what he's told' – but the momentary slip up drew him short. Margaret didn't appear to have noticed, but Eloise was cluey with such things.

Shaking his head slightly, Draco turned back to the foundations of his _dacquoise_. As he did so, he called over his shoulder. "Eloise, assist Margaret with finishing up. She's already over time. And boy, tuck your shirt in."

"But Dray, it's –"

"I don't care if you're wearing an apron. Do as you're told."

George didn't protest further. He never did. From that moment, as Draco hadn't expected it would, Tuesday kick-started with just as much ease as Monday. Potter didn't protest again. As it happened, his _religieuse_ were quite up to scratch as well. The decoration was something different to Draco's own, but…

Good enough. Not quite perfect, for nothing was ever perfect, but yes. Good enough.

* * *

"I'm beginning to grow concerned when I see that expression."

"What, in all of your vast knowledge of my expressions?"

"Exactly."

"Funny. But it's not a bad thing, I promise."

"I'm not convinced. What have you done?"

"Can we start our day without you being suspicious that I've 'done something', maybe? At least wait until we get _inside_ the shop?"

"No."

"How unsurprising."

"Don't risk considering me predictable, Potter."

"Then don't always think I'm going to screw up."

"I have to. Disaster is a certainty upon the horizon."

"Well, that's optimistic of you. How do you know whatever I'm thinking of won't be some kind of breakthrough?"

"Potter –"

"Hold on, Malfoy. Just let it alone for a bit, yeah? Wait and see."

Draco bit his tongue. At only the third day of working with Potter, he'd come to understand that he was nothing if not persistent with his baking. It might have been commendable, but…

He got that look on his face. That thoughtful look, the slight detachedness that Draco had grown accustomed to in such a short time. Watching the back of Potter's head as he started towards the front doors of his shop, Draco frowned. Potter had already brought change with him. Deliberate change – because that was surely what his expression entailed – didn't bode well.

* * *

Wednesday should have passed as smoothly as Monday and Tuesday. Smoother, even, given that in two days Potter should have been more than acquainted with the basics of the morning routine. Even considering that the list of goods to be baked of a morning varied, it should have been easy enough to pick up.

It should have been smooth – except that, as anticipated, Potter's coveted idea wasn't breakthrough.

"Two days!" Draco bellowed across his kitchen. "Two days, you've had, and you –"

"Well, shoot me the fuck down if I thought it might have been a good idea!" Potter shouted back.

"Oh, believe me, I would be _more_ than happy to do just that."

Draco wholeheartedly stood by his own words. Had Eloise not been watching, eyes wides and flicking between them both so fast she must be getting dizzy, Draco might have drawn his wand. Had George not been peering around the feeble shield of the saloon doors with nothing short of cowering fear, he might have flung a _Stupefy_ towards Potter just for good measure. The wand-holster on his arm seemed to itch with the urge to unbuckle itself and allow his wand to slide into his hand.

Potter, from the expression he wore and how tightly his fists were balled, apparently felt the same.

"I gave you one instruction," Draco snapped. "One instruction."

"Oh, so that list is just one –"

"Do what you're bloody well told!"

"And if I can do both?" Potter took half a step forwards, and though it did little to reduce the expansive distance between them, Draco felt the weight of that step nonetheless. Potter was pissed.

Well, good, because Draco was pissed to.

"I didn't _tell_ you to do both."

"But I can. I'm not incapable of –"

"Madeleines, Potter. I told you to make the madeleines this morning."

"Which is about as difficult as a _Lumos_."

"Maybe you should do just that, then! Clearly you're too blind to see that this is my –"

Potter slapped his wooden spoon atop the counter. Eloise flinched slightly and George squeaked as he ducked behind the doors. "You have such a fucking superiority complex!"

Draco felt his lip curl. The twitch he'd been suppressing tingled in the corner of his eye. "Says you, the fucking idiot who thinks they can make not one but _two_ –"

"Two recipes at once isn't a huge feat, you moron!"

"- and more than that, neglecting the one I _instructed_ you to make –"

"It's not neglected; they're cooking!"

"- and disregarding the entire ambiance of the shop by –"

"Oh, fuck your ambiance, Malfoy," Potter snapped. His grasp upon the wooden spoon was so tight his knuckles had turned white. "That's not ambiance, that's fucking stagnation. Try something _knew_ for a change."

Draco all but snarled. "New? New like you're bloody –"

"A _franzbrötchen_ is practically just a cinnamon roll," Potter fiercely overrode him, and Draco didn't think he'd ever been more infuriated for an interruption in his life. "You French-inspired twat, branch out a little and pull the fucking stick out of your arse."

Then, with a whirling step, Potter turned from Draco and strode back towards his workbench. The vigour with which he attacked his dough seemed more of a battle than baking.

Draco seethed. He glared at the back of Potter's stupidly messy head, the tightness of his shoulders as he worked, and he _seethed_. Less than three days Potter had worked for him. Less than three days of compliance – or supposed compliance – and then he'd decided to make changes. And not just any change but a _big_ change.

Draco was in charge. Draco had decided that his pâtisserie would be French-inspired, with French desserts and cakes as he'd been taught.

It was _Draco's_ pâtisserie. _His_. And Potter had tried to introduce something knew.

The urge to retort, to retaliate, and preferably with magic, was nearly overwhelming. It took all of Draco's willpower to school his features, raise his chin, and turn back to his own workbench. If he pounded the dough it a little more intensely than was absolutely necessary, then he could hardly be blamed for that. It was all _Potter's_ fault. Potter's, and the changes.

Draco had thought he'd wanted a change, and he had, but this? He didn't want his world taken away from him. Not like that. Not by anyone; even a Potter who had admittedly intrigued him for the past two weeks.

Draco glared at the dough oozing between his fingers, and he wouldn't have been surprised had magic cooked it beneath his palms. Such had happened before when he worked himself into a rage in the midst of baking. _The bloody git. He's always been an asshole. I should just fire him_.

 _I should just…_

 _I should…_

Draco kneaded his dough.

He'd almost forgotten that Potter had called him by his real name until Eloise approached him. She sidled up to him so quietly he wouldn't have noticed her except that the kitchen had fallen deafeningly quiet but for Draco's throbbing heartbeat in his ears. "Mr. Malloy," she all but whispered. "Sir, are you…?"

"Eloise, if those madeleines burn because of Potter's incompetence, you're taking the blame as much as he is."

"Yes sir," she said dutifully. And then, "Potter, sir?"

Draco didn't look up from the dough he kneaded. He didn't, and mostly because he was silently cursing his slip. In the anger that still thundered in his temples, the rage that demanded he do _something_ to Potter to put him in his place, he realised his mistake.

Just as he realised Potter's. Just as he knew that, as she'd been quick enough to make the connection in that moment, Eloise had likely heard Potter's slip, too.

It was a problem. So much of that morning had been a problem, from the moment Draco had pointedly asked Potter just what the hell he was doing when he'd told him to make _biscuits_ , not fucking cinnamon rolls.

" _Franzbrötchen_ ," Potter had said with a quietly satisfied smile. "A friend taught me his recipe. I thought you might try it. Add a bit of culture to your menu."

That was when Draco had snapped.

The fact of the matter was that Draco didn't like change. His urge to hire an not-really-apprentice had demanded it, and that urge had been unshakeable, but Draco still didn't want it. He hadn't expected Potter. He hadn't expected every other little change that Potter would bring with him. He certainly hadn't anticipated Potter introducing a fucking German dessert into his kitchen.

Gritting his teeth, Draco trained his glare upon the dough beneath his hands. It didn't deserve his rage, but he nowhere else to direct it. "Get back to work, Eloise," he said curtly.

"I –"

"And make sure George hasn't blown up the coffee machine or something. I won't stand for any more incompetence this morning."

Eloise stood silently beside him for a long moment. Then, just as quietly, and more quietly than her usual clumsiness would suggest possible, she scuttled away once more.

Draco didn't spare Potter a glance for the rest of the morning. Not when the clatter of trays bespoke the madeleines being drawn from the oven. Not when the rich aroma of cinnamon and something else, something _more_ , flooded the kitchen. Draco ignored him and Potter ignored him right back.

When he finished for the afternoon, Potter didn't once spare him a glance as he stepped out the front door.

* * *

"Mr. Malloy, is something…"

"Margaret, why in God's name are you whispering."

"I just didn't want…"

"What?"

"I wasn't sure if…"

"Speak up, woman. Bloody hell, are you ill? Go and get yourself a glass of water or something."

"That wasn't what I… No, sir. I was only wondering…"

"Margaret, I swear, if you don't stop you're dithering, I'll make a point of burning your next batch."

"You'd never, Mr. Malloy."

"Believe me, I very much would."

"Alright, then. Have you quarrelled with Mr. Haighs?"

"What?"

"Mr. Haighs, have you –?"

"I heard you the first time."

"… And?"

"Margaret, I fail to see how this is any of your business."

"Oh, it's not, Mr. Malloy. Only that you've seemed somewhat down all morning and Mr. Haighs seems to be, ah… dissatisfied with… something."

"Margaret –"

"He doesn't talk all that much, but I think he's a hard worker, sir. I like him."

"You like him?"

"I like him. If it matters any."

It didn't. It didn't really matter to Draco at all. And yet, as Margaret dipped her head and returned to kneading her dough, Draco regarded the back of her head intently, if only to avoid glancing over to the other side of the room.

It wasn't Margaret's place to speak up. _Anguis In Temptationem_ was _Draco's_ pâtisserie. If he wanted to fire Potter for not doing what he was told, it was his prerogative.

And yet…

* * *

Thursday morning was one moment of awkwardness after another. And it was terrible.

Potter had been a member of Draco's staff for less than a week. Less than half a week, even. How he managed to have such an influence upon the entire atmosphere of the kitchen was something Draco had no understanding of.

But then, Potter _was_ famous. Or ex-famous. Whatever. Maybe he just had a knack for that kind of thing?

For whatever reason, the kitchen was so quiet that the mournful humming of the oven was tangible upon the thrumming air. Eloise tiptoed – actually tiptoed – and proceeded to trip over her own feet as a result all the more. Margaret continued to speak in whispers for the rest of the morning until she scurried from the pâtisserie at six o'clock on the dot. Even George, who Draco had wondered was even capable of holding his tongue, was hushed.

It was unnerving. Draco had always wanted George to shut up, but the quiet tension in the room was more discomforting than anything. Even worse was when George, the utter fool that he was, even attempted to run the kitchen tap quietly; that it then proceeded to take three times as long to fill the basin was something that Draco's disgruntlement couldn't abide.

"Boy, fill up the sink."

"I… what?"

"Are you washing up?"

"I am, I –"

"Then why in God's name are you attempting to fill the bloody sink one drop at a time?"

Even to Draco's ears he could hear the irrational anger to his words. He heard his persisting disgruntlement. The annoyance and frustration, too, because after Monday and Tuesday had gone so unexpectedly well, that disruption had arisen was nothing short of infuriating. Even worse was that, for all of Potter's stupid German rolls bullshit, he'd worked as well as he had the previous two days thereafter.

Draco couldn't help but look at Potter that Thursday. He'd half expected him not to show up at all, and yet there he was. Working. Working with head bowed and face strangely blank, eyes focused upon his hands and his baking. And he baked well, which was all the worse.

Draco worked on his opera cakes with meticulous care, but he still couldn't quite look away. Because in many ways, it was worse that Potter worked diligently and exactly as Draco had told him to.

The _pralines_ were packed into their paper wrappings by an attentive Eloise as soon as Potter finished combining and cooling their sugar-caramelised goodness. The macaroon top-up left a sprinkling of colour and scents – all traditional, of course – and there wasn't a thing Draco could pick at or criticise. Not really.

Even the _kouign amann_ , a recipe for disaster or at least a minor burnt crust or two, were baked with little Draco could say on the matter. Golden brown pastry, the sugared crust crispy and folded neatly – it was as though Potter was deliberately doing his best to annoy Draco.

Except that Potter didn't even look his way. Not once. Draco might as well been absent from the room entirely. That realisation infuriated him all the more; it threw him back to their school years as he'd so often glanced, with particular emphasis upon fifth year when Potter had been so decidedly distracted with whatever went on in that Gryffindor head of his. It hadn't been right. Being disregarded, overlooked, deemed unimportant when compared to other aspects of his 'busy schedule' – it wasn't right.

Draco didn't like being overlooked. He liked it almost as little as losing control of the situation. That both should happen at once…

It would have been easier if Potter was a shit baker. It would have been easier if he'd continued to disrupt the kitchen with verbal explosions like the day before. It would have been far easier if Draco fired him and just went back to how he'd been not even a week before. Nothing much would have changed, and Draco didn't really _need_ an apprentice.

But he didn't. For foolish reasons that he couldn't quite put into words, Draco didn't fire Potter. He blamed his distraction for the not-quite perfect symmetry of his own opera cakes, an imperfection that seemed to embody everything wrong at the present time.

Eloise shot Draco meaningful glances all morning that he ignored. George sidled up alongside Potter and muttered something to him that Draco wasn't sure Potter even replied to. And, when lunch time ticked around, Potter wrapped up his final baking, slipped off his apron, and strode through the door without a backwards glance. Draco didn't watch him go. He _didn't_.

"Um…"

"Eloise, watch what you say," Draco warned, voice low and distracted as he added the final garnish to the top tier of his opera cakes. Even asymmetrical they were damn-near perfect. Draco ignored the fact that such knowledge didn't manage satisfy him as much as it usually would.

"I was just thinking."

"I've told you not to do that. You think in wayward directions."

"Just…"

Sighing, Draco drew his gaze sidelong to where she pottered alongside him. She appeared to be cleaning, though the speed at which she stacked bowls and utensils was practically glacial. "Is your contribution going to be constructive or another pointless statement?" he asked.

Across the room, George's audible retreat sounded with the swinging of saloon doors. Neither Draco or Eloise spared him a moment's notice. Rather, Eloise set her stack of bowls carefully upon the counter alongside her. She dusted her fingers off as she spoke. "Do you, um, like Mr. Oliver?"

"It's Mr. Oliver now, is it?" Draco asked, choosing to ignore the rest of her question.

"He asked us just to call him by name, actually," Eloise replied. "He said he's never liked formalities or anything, or that kind of pointless respect."

Draco felt his eye twitch slightly. Pointless respect? If that wasn't a spit in the face then he didn't know what was. Had Potter told Eloise to approach him to relay his words? "Is there a purpose to this discussion?"

Eloise made a small grunting noise that was nothing short of unsavoury in Draco's opinion. He turned back to his opera cakes as she continued. "I was just wondering if you liked him."

"Why would you wonder that?"

"Because you're keeping him on, even after what he did."

"I never said I was." Draco nudged at a curl of chocolate garnish, straightening it slightly. There. Perfect.

"But he's still here," Eloise persisted. "You could just get rid of him, so I thought… I mean, is it because of your history together or something?"

"What?" Draco snapped his gaze to her so fast he nearly knocked over one of his cakes.

Eloise was frowning slightly down to where her fingers tugged upon her apron. "I mean, I _assume_ you do, seeing the way you speak to each other and all. Were you friends when you were younger or something? When you – I mean, when you had other names? Or… whatever?"

Her words were a mish-mash of suggestions and realisations, and Draco was momentarily floored by them. Eloise was far from a stupid person – he would have gotten rid of her long ago if she were – but he hadn't deemed her terribly perceptive, either. And yet somehow she'd deduced that he and Potter had known one another. More than that, she'd heard the slips of names and created a further deduction of reasoning in that regard, too.

Though he drew his attention once more back to his opera cakes, Draco barely saw them. Instead, his focus was settled more distantly, introspectively, upon the faint image of himself reflected in the polished _ganache_ surface of his cakes. The perfection of that reflectiveness was dimmed that day as well.

"What would make you think we were friends?" Draco found himself asking.

Why that question, Draco didn't know. He was almost embarrassed to find he'd asked it. Eloise didn't seem to realise, however. Instead, he felt her shrug at his side. "Just the way you talk to each other, I guess. Kind of like if you'd known each other."

"Knowing is different from befriending."

"I know. But I guess maybe… you just seem kind of similar? In more than just the baking, I mean. Like – you're both really good and all, but it's like… something else, you know?"

Draco had nothing to say to that. For once, his tongue felt glued to the roof of his mouth and he couldn't even think in which direction to reply. Eloise thought they'd been friends? That they were similar? How in the name of Merlin were they similar? Certainly, there was a similarity of skillsets in their pastry-making, and that inclination had to be rooted in some slight sameness. But alike? Draco had never seen himself as more _un_ like anyone in his life.

"We're not friends," he found himself saying, reaching for another garnish and placing it deliberately atop one of his miniature cakes. "We never were."

"Oh," was all Eloise said, and she remained only a little longer before taking her leave. Even after her departure, however, Draco thought. He thought more than he'd care to admit.

Friends. Similarities. Likeness.

They'd never even _wanted_ to be friends – or at least Potter hadn't. And Draco hadn't since that fateful moment in first year either, though. Since the war, hatred and rivalry had waned into nothing, but still…

Friends? Draco wasn't sure why he couldn't stop thinking about it, but for whatever reason the notion was both tantalising and frustrating.

It wasn't until Wilson arrived that afternoon, however, that Draco's consideration of Potter took an about face. As it would to any master pâtissier, that chance was initiated in the form of a pastry.

"Have you tried them?" Wilson asked.

For a long moment, Draco didn't even realise the boy was talking to him. Seated at his usual table, sipping his usual cup of Earl Grey and reading through his usual boringly sparse newspaper, Draco was nothing if not distracted from the thorough cleaning of the only other worker in his store that afternoon. It was only when Wilson added, "Mr. Malloy?" that he even looked up.

"What?"

Wilson was a quiet, dutiful kid. Several years younger than Eloise, though a little older than George, he nonetheless somehow seemed the most mature of Draco's staff. The most mature and, in Draco's opinion, the most efficient. He wouldn't have been terribly surprised if the boy possessed some kind of magic, or at least a hint of house elf heritage, given his cleaning proficiency.

Wilson had paused at the counter, regarding Draco with his owlish eyes. He was a twig of a boy, with too-long fingers and a flop of a fringe that he spent most of his shift blowing out of his eyes. It would have annoyed Draco, except that sightlessness didn't appear to impinge upon Wilson's ability to clean or serve customers.

As it was, he was blinking through his fringe as he stared at Draco from across the breadth of the shopfront. He tipped his head backwards in a gesture to the kitchen. "The rolls," Wilson said, his hollow voice as monotonous as ever.

"Boy, if you're going to talk, make a little sense," Draco sighed.

"Mr. Oliver's rolls," Wilson clarified. "The _franzbrötchen_."

Draco nearly dropped his cup of tea. "I beg your pardon?"

Wilson didn't appear to realise the horrified surprise he'd induced. His gaze had fallen to his hands were they idly folded his dishrag. "They're really quite good, I think. Cooked through, a good balance of cinnamon to sugar. The pastry's surprisingly light considering how dense they are, but it's quite filling." He tipped his head backwards in a gesture once more. "They're _really_ good."

Draco stared at the boy. For a long, long moment he stared, until his eyes actually began to water in protest. He continued to stare at where Wilson had been even when the boy disappeared behind the counter to continue his cleaning.

The fact of the matter was that Wilson was a cleaner. It was what he did. And yet, quite by chance, Draco had discovered some years ago that Wilson also had something of a cultured tongue. How he'd grown into the refined food-critic that he was, Draco didn't know, but critic he certainly was.

So Draco stared. He pondered. He was horrified, but he thought. And the curiosity, that damned Potter-intrigue, arose once more. Stupid, painfully annoying Potter. Draco _should_ just fire him.

And yet he didn't. He likely wouldn't. And that evening, when Draco retreated up to his flat as he always did after closing, he knew that the change Potter had brought would continue whether he liked it or not. The taste of cinnamon and sugar, the heavy-light density of the pastry, and the hint of buttery undertones that pervaded throughout, still curled upon his tongue.

Wilson had been right. Potters rolls were good. Really good.

* * *

"How unexpected. You're here early this morning."

"Oh."

"What?"

"Are you speaking to me now, Malfoy?"

"I was never not speaking to you, Potter. Such would be unbecoming of an employer."

"Huh."

" _What_?"

"Sure as fuck looked like it yesterday."

" _I_ was ignoring _you_? And what, pray tell, were you doing, then?"

"Ignoring you right back. I'm not trying to hide that fact."

"You're infuriating."

"You're a prat."

"I –"

"Is it such a bad thing that something even sightly different might be introduced into your wares? Just one or two things?"

"Potter –"

"Or is it just that I overstepped the boundaries of your omnipotent rule in my probationary period?"

" _Omnipotent_ –"

"If you're so pissed off about it all, Draco, what do you want? You're more than welcome to keep ignoring me if you'd prefer. Hell, if you're going to continue being a prat, fire me. I wanted to work here, but not if you're going to be such an ass."

Draco stared at Potter through the darkness of pre-dawn. The veiled radiance from inside his pâtisserie, from where Margaret had been baking for hours already, illuminated the street just slightly where they stood half shadowed. In the darkness, the changes Draco had seen of Potter since so many years ago – the thinness of his face, the lack of his glasses, the absence of his volatility…

Potter was a mystery to Draco. He may not _like_ him as Margaret suggested, but he didn't hate him. In barely a week, Potter had intrigued him, had frustrated him, had infuriated him, and had fought and yet passed through his 'probationary period' seemingly with ease. As Draco had been shaken, Potter seemed largely untouched.

And the rolls…

Potter's words hung in the air as he fell silent. Expectantly silent, and waiting. Draco considered for a moment, and it was the briefest of moments. Even that wasn't truly necessary; he knew what he would do. He'd known the prior afternoon, even before Margaret had spoken to him.

Brushing past Potter with the barest touch of shoulders that Draco pretended to ignore, he tapped his wand upon the door of his pâtisserie. It clicked open almost silently.

"Your cinnamon rolls weren't appalling, Potter," he said without turning, striding through the doorway. "I'd even go so far as to say they was interesting."

And he left it at that. For now.

* * *

For whatever reason, the kitchen seemed brighter on Friday. Draco had spent most of the morning surreptitiously attempting to discern why; he asked George if he'd changed the light bulbs – George hadn't – and Eloise if she'd seen told Wilson to scrub the windows – which she hadn't either.

There were no more lights on, no magical illumination that Draco was aware of, and to his knowledge he hadn't just been freed of a semi-blinding spell. Which left him unutterably baffled.

Not baffled enough to be unable to work, however. And his work flowed with almost ridiculous ease that morning.

Draco refused to acknowledge it was because of his apology. It hadn't been an apology, even, despite Margaret's guileless query as soon as they'd walked through the door. "Have you sorted out your differences, then?" she'd asked. "Said your sorrys, Mr. Malloy?"

Draco didn't acknowledge such a ridiculous notion with a reply. Why should he have to be the one to apologise, anyway? If anything, _Potter_ was the one who'd been in the wrong.

Ridiculous. An utterly ridiculous statement, even if Draco couldn't quite regret it for the faint touch of a smile Margaret's words called to Potter's face. Draco hadn't been watching him, of course. It was only by chance he'd seen it at all.

Chance. Only chance.

Even so, Margaret was right in her sentiment. The ball had been dropped, and as soon as Draco and Potter had stepped into the kitchen, it was to fall into the clockwork patterns they'd somehow so easily adopted earlier in the week. The patterns that, even in their mutual silence, they'd emulated the past two days.

And it worked.

The éclairs, cream and decoration and all, were finished before eight o'clock. The extra batches of madeleines and the array of floristically bequeathed cupcakes followed within another two hours. Earlier than he ever had before, Draco found himself bent over the puff pastry for his _mille-feuille_ and spreading with precise swipes of his rolling pin. Hammering out the vanilla-custard slice had, surprisingly, never felt more satisfying.

Even stranger, however, was that Potter talked to him. He appeared to be making up for lost time because, far be it from ignoring Draco or simply replying when spoken to, he called across the kitchen with askance and comments.

"I take it you wanted the whole two dozen of these to compile your 'trio of flavours'?" he would ask, standing in front of the oven with a retrieved tray of éclairs.

Draco spared him a glance. "Potter, I specifically indicated you to use them."

"Okay. Then I hope you don't mind if I use this extra batch to stock up on anything not chocolate, caramel or vanilla-flavoured."

Draco didn't mind. It was logical. He hadn't told Potter to do it expressly, but he didn't mind.

Or when Draco had been scouring the pantry for the madeleines' vanilla dusting sugar that George _should_ have retrieved already but he couldn't find to save himself. "Here," Potter said, appearing at his side with the bag as though Conjured.

Draco had blinked. "Oh. Yes, there it is."

"George left it next to the sink."

"Fool of a boy…"

Potter, surprisingly, didn't reprimand his sentiment as Draco half expected him to. As he almost _wanted_ him to, because it would have been so typically Potter as to be a comfort. Instead, he only smiled with a hint of his crooked smile, shrugged, and turned back to finishing his éclairs.

"I take it these strawberries are for the _fraisiers_? Because I've used them for the _fraisiers_ ," Potter said a little later, almost in disregard.

"Logical thinking, Haighs," Draco replied, even though he didn't really have to. "Of course they are."

Or, "They're slightly too dark, but I had a back-up half done because that oven seems to do that a little bit."

"Remarkable forward-thinking, Haighs," Draco replied, even if he was silently just a little surprised that Potter had not only noticed the quirks of the oven already but prepared for it. "Attempt not to make such a sorry mistake again. Ingredients are wasted."

"I'll bear that in mind when I'm deliberately burning something next time," Potter said, but he smiled slightly again. Always that slight smile.

Draco worked, and Potter worked alongside him. Draco ordered Eloise to 'move faster' and George to 'get your head out of the clouds, boy', and Potter asked with polite request almost exactly the same thing. When Draco strode towards the oven, Potter moved out of his way instinctively, seeming almost not to notice, and when Potter stretched on his toes for the second whisk stored above Draco's head, Draco instinctively rolled out of his way.

It shouldn't have been that easy. Not at all, and especially given Draco and Potter were so entirely different, so opposite, so… so… _other_. But Eloise had said they were similar, perhaps only in their focus upon baking, and it seemed to work. It flowed fluidly up until twelve o'clock almost exactly.

That was when Draco turned and nearly walked straight into Potter with his tray of miniature _fraisiers_ plucked straight from the fridge. Pink and white and pristine, they were almost perfect. Almost as good as Draco could manage himself.

"Oops," Potter said, back-pedalling slightly. "Sorry."

He said sorry. He actually apologised, and even if it wasn't for what Draco would have preferred – Potter _had_ been in the wrong on Wednesday, after all – it was an apology. Potter had never apologised to Draco before. Not without the thick underlay of sarcasm to his words.

Maybe that was why Draco stopped him. Maybe that was why, quite without intention, he paused in mixing his pastry fondant. He really couldn't afford to stop even briefly in the midst of such cooking, the saucepan of liquidised sugar and corn syrup already halfway to done. But he stopped, moved the saucepan absently from the boil, and regarded Potter as he stood before him.

"Potter," he began, voice low enough that George, scrubbing at the sink across the kitchen, wouldn't have been able to hear him, "what are you playing at?"

Potter blinked at him. His eyebrows rose, eyes guilelessly wide and head cocking slightly. "Playing at?"

Draco had never been more suspicious of innocence. George's clattering was a discordant background tune as he trained his gaze shrewdly. "You go directly against my instructions, proceed to ignore me for half a week –"

"Just as you ignored me."

"- and then pretend none of that even happened seemingly out of the blue," Draco continued, ignoring his interruption. "Your behaviour is not only irrational but tedious. I should fire you."

A shadow of Potter's smile touched his lips again, and Draco couldn't help but notice. He couldn't help but stare, if only for a moment. "But you won't," Potter said.

Draco arched an eyebrow. Slowly, deliberately, he folded his arms across his chest. "Oh?"

Potter shrugged, adjusted his grasp on the tray of _fraisiers_ , and shook his head. "I don't think so. Not anymore. Not 'out of the blue' or anything."

"You seem very certain of that fact given that I was sorely tempted but days ago," Draco said, choosing to ignore the fact that he'd just acknowledged Potter's words as truth.

Potter didn't appear to. His stupid smile widened further. "You won't. Because you liked my _franzbrötchen_."

For a moment, Draco stared at him. He heard, distantly, when Eloise scurried into the kitchen, grabbed a tray from the counter of desserts awaiting distribution, and disappeared with a swing of saloon doors a moment later. He heard, distantly, when George lost his sponge in the depths of the sink with a squawk and splashed unnecessarily loudly in retrieval. He heard and saw them both, but he only stared at Potter.

Because it all clicked into place.

"You were testing me," Draco said flatly.

Entirely shameless, Potter nodded. "Pretty much, yeah."

"Why would you do that?"

"To see if I could work with you," Potter said. "To see if you would be as unyielding as you pretend to be or if you'd allow some slight creative liberty into you kitchen kingdom."

Ignoring how satisfying the words 'kitchen kingdom' sounded, Draco raised his chin slightly. "I'm your new employer."

"And I'm your new employee."

"You should have been cow-toeing at least for the first week."

"You should have been making some small allowances in this first week."

"Your time should be better spent fulfilling your pre-existing duties rather than dabbling with bloody cinnamon rolls."

Potter shrugged again. "I had the time. And I had to see."

Draco's eyebrow twitched. "To see?"

"If you liked it. If there was a possibility for integration." Potter's smile was far too complacent, and Draco still couldn't quite stop staring. "Turns out I don't think you're as opposed to change as you pretend to be. Maybe you even think it might be a good thing?"

Draco wanted to refute him. He wanted to hiss and splutter and declare that _of course_ nothing would be changing, that Potter's stupid rolls were good but it was _Draco's_ kitchen kingdom, and that it was frankly disgusting for a mere apprentice – because regardless of skill, Potter was still his apprentice – would be so presumptuous as to assume a modicum of autonomy.

Draco should have been infuriated. Angry, even. Indignant enough to definitely fire Potter this time for his deception. That he felt something approaching respect well within him was thoroughly disconcerting.

"That's remarkably Slytherin of you, Potter," he muttered.

Potter huffed in the little sigh-laugh Draco had noticed he was prone to, the laugh he hadn't in the years of their youth. "I don't really see it that way. The world isn't split into four houses and their defining traits, you know."

"It is more than you'd expect of it, as a matter of fact," Draco said, pressing his lips together briefly. It was that or admit defeat to the curiosity, the wonder, and yes, what was definitely irrationally dawning respect rising within him.

"But less than you do," Potter replied. Then his smile shifted into something almost teasing. "I take it I'm not fired, then?"

Draco clicked his tongue. "Did I say you were?"

"You've said very little, actually," Potter said. Then he tipped his head again and an expectant expression raised his eyebrows once more.

There was suggestion there. Suggestion beneath the expectation, and Draco knew what Potter wasn't saying. He knew it in the instinctive way that he similarly knew that he'd reached a point of no return. In his kitchen, the heat of warm ovens and the scent of cooking sugar and rich vanilla, the sound of George's bumbling and Eloise's periodic fussing and the comfort of being exactly where he _should_ be, Draco marvelled that he'd been forced onto a crossroad.

He resisted. For a moment, he denied the inevitable. Then, meeting Potter's expectant gaze, he sighed with all the long-suffering he could manage. "Fine, Potter. One."

"One?"

"Don't make me spell it out."

"I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about."

 _When did he become so bloody Slytherin_? Draco grumbled to himself, for regardless of what Potter said he most definitely was Slytherin. He raised a single finger before him. "One recipe a week. A 'Haighs Special', as it were, or whatever the fuck you want to call it."

The corners of Potter's lips twitched. "One?"

"Only one."

"One whole recipe a week?"

"Potter, I'm already regretting –"

"Alright," Potter said, and the widening of his smile was positively appalling. Draco couldn't help but stare. It bespoke change, that smile. A disregard for the past and a looking to the future. Even more so when Potter finally spoke. "Alright, then. Whatever you say. Thanks, Draco."

Then he turned.

He slid the tray of _fraisiers_ onto the counter of delicacies awaiting Eloise's delivering hands, and he turned back to his counter he'd momentarily abandoned in the multitasking manner necessary of any pâtissier.

He started folding the edges of his pastry with surprisingly dextrous, delicate fingers, reaching for the bag of coarse-grained sugar to liberally sprinkle his to-be _palmiers_.

And he didn't glance at Draco again – which was probably a good thing because Draco couldn't look away for a long time.

He should have fired Potter. No, more than that, he likely shouldn't have hired him in the first place. It wasn't ever going to work, was never going to be easy. But then, Draco had never been one much for 'easy', and this… It wasn't easy, but it certainly wasn't _bad_.

There had been something within Draco that needed to change in the past few months. A nagging something that, for whatever reason, despite the presence that should have been anything, Potter had somehow soothed just a little. It was almost like… almost as though…

Draco had felt it at school, and he'd ignored it because Potter was a prat. He'd felt it at his trial, but he'd ignored it then, too, because to be so attentive towards someone doing him a favour was a one-way ticket to having that attentiveness abused. And he'd acknowledged it when he'd seen the newspaper pictures and the headlines years ago and contemplated just how far his schoolyard rival had departed from him.

Draco had left the Wizarding world. He'd left everyone in it, too – his mother, his father, those few school friends who still spoke to him, and those schoolmates that hadn't either. He'd left Potter, the boy who'd saved him – _him_ – from the flames of Fiendfyre just as he'd saved every other person in the Wizarding world.

Potter, who'd just called him 'Draco' for the second time that day.

Eloise was staring. That realisation was the only reason that Draco could turn from where Potter had quickly lost himself in the focused, rapid pace of a baking expert. There was precision to his movements, a precision that Draco had always been satisfied to witness of a baker almost as much as he enjoyed losing himself in the feeling himself. The dough beneath his fingers, the catch of sugar under his nails, the scent of rawness a precursor of the rich, warm flavours that could be tasted as much as smelled when the pastries emerged from the oven.

Draco all but lived for that feeling. He was only just realising in that moment how much he enjoyed watching another similarly loose themselves. The calmness yet attentiveness, the smoothing of features but for a touch of a concentrated frown… Shoulders slightly tensed, fingers eternally moving, building and crafting…

Draco was perhaps a little relieved that Eloise saved him from his staring.

"What did he mean by that?" she asked, leaning towards Draco and dropping her voice to a whisper.

Draco spared her a sidelong glance. He didn't flinch away, didn't pretend he hadn't been staring. To do so would have made him appear guilty, which Draco was _not._ "What are you talking about?"

"Draco," Eloise said, curiosity colouring her tone. Her own thoughtful frown added a degree of maturity to her features that Draco hadn't beheld before. "Is that you're actual name? Not Dray? Did he know it from when you were –?"

"Eloise, get your ass moving and make sure George hasn't locked himself in the cold rooms again," Draco interrupted, and he wasn't blushing. To blush would have been not only irrational but unnecessary and – and there was _no reason_ he would possibly be embarrassed.

Eloise smirked. She actually smirked, and there was no attempt made to hide it this time. "That was one time, and he didn't actually lock himself –"

"Eloise."

"George is more than capable of –"

" _Eloise_."

Her smirk deepened but she didn't persist. Instead, sparing a glance for Potter where he still worked, lost in his folding, she shrugged. "Alright. Whatever you say, sir."

Draco nodded sharply, tightening the fold of his arms across his chest just slightly. "I do say," he said, then turned just as sharply back to his own counter. "You and your interruptions. I swear to God, I'll never get my work done."

It was a lie, of course. Since Potter had been working with him, the workload of the entire kitchen had eased so remarkably as to make it almost easy. But for the moment, the excuse was necessary enough. Draco was satisfied when Eloise finally started towards the doors into the shopfront. Her parting words, however – not so much.

"Not friends, my ass," she'd muttered, and he could have sworn she'd snickered.

Not friends. Definitely not friends, neither in the past nor the present. And yet… Draco spared another brief – very brief – glance towards Potter as he strode towards the ovens. He moved as though he half-owned the place, an presumptuous belief given that he truly had been in Draco's pâtisserie for less than a week.

Then Draco turned and bowed his head over his batch of fondant, swinging the saucepan over the hotplate once more _._ Not friends, but perhaps, with time, something else.


	4. Chapter 4 - Palette Cleaners

**Chapter 4: Palette Cleaners**

 _~To cleanse the eater's palate and accentuate the meal's flavours but further, to clear the mouth of residual flavours before proceeding to the subsequent course~_

* * *

Of an afternoon, the mayhem in _Anguis in Temptationem_ simmered to a moderate pace. The frequency of customers picked up speed as those that favoured a sleep-in and rising with the sun – the particularly late sun, in Draco's opinion – hauled themselves from their beds.

"I think you've corrupted me with your croissants, Mr. Malloy," Timothy Varga often claimed as he turned to leave the shop every afternoon. "I'm ruined for any other breakfast. You'll make me as plump as a plucked fowl, you will!"

Draco objected to that statement on a number of counts. Firstly, that Timothy always stopped by at mid-afternoon which was _definitely_ belated if considering appropriate breakfast hours. Secondly, that it was hardly Draco's fault what he chose to buy, and that 'ruining' was nothing short of dramatic. Draco of all people knew dramatic.

And thirdly, that it was just as likely to be the three cupcakes, handful of pralines, and paper bag stuffed with French pastries and dozens of variable cookies that contributed to the man becoming 'a plucked fowl'. Draco resented the offence to his croissants specifically; it was hardly _their_ fault.

Or at least he pretended to, and even then not so much. When the doddering Timothy left every afternoon, Draco turned back to his newspaper none the worse for wear. Back to his tea. Back to his whiling away the hours in the pristine pâtisserie that mulled with the scents of sugar and bread and pastry, glowing with the aura of a different kind of magic. Complete disregard for just about all aspects of his surroundings was what Draco became.

Or what he used to become. Much had changed in the past weeks, and most significantly that Draco rarely whiled his afternoons away in solitude anymore.

That company – unasked for, unwanted, but somehow unconsciously accepted nonetheless – had become a distraction. An intrigue, as it always had been. Instead of revelling in the quirky, lilting throughs of Bach that rippled from his overhead radio, or nodding his approval of Wilson's usual dedication to cleaning, Draco watched.

Harry Potter was a curiosity.

That fact was one Draco had known for a long time. Weeks ago it had registered, when Draco had first interviewed him for a position as his apprentice, but even before that. Childhood memories arose to remind Draco of that fact; the Boy Who Lived, even in Malfoy Manor, had been a subject of intrigue to him. Fascination, as it were, and one that resulted in a steadfast decision to befriend said Boy at the earliest convenience.

That decision hadn't been realised, but Draco's interest hadn't been deflected; it had simply changed its form. Just as it had changed again, and again, and so many times as to be a confusing mixture of interests and disappointment, aggravation and countless other elements that Draco could hardly consider untangling.

Harry Potter was a curiosity, and far from untangling him, in the past weeks Draco had only grown more certain of that fact.

Taking a sip of his tea – just short of scoldingly hot and perfectly so – Draco kept his chin tucked and attention turned towards his crossword puzzle. Or he pretended to. He pretended just as he'd been pretending for as long as Potter had taken to sitting across the room from him in his own chair and idling away the hours.

Potter was on his phone. Or he was reading. Or he was eating his lunch – what looked to be a homemade one at that – or simply sitting. He rarely spoke in the afternoons except for an occasional comment that rarely required a reply. "You're a very dedicated worker, Wilson," he would say, or "How unexpected, that you know everyone who comes in by name, Draco."

Always Draco. He always called Draco by his name, now – or at least he did in the absence of customers. Draco was horrified, and mostly because he didn't hate it. He found he didn't hate it at all.

Draco stared at Potter when he pretended to do his crosswords, and he didn't hate that, either. That he couldn't often look away was a problem, but hate? He didn't hate him. Potter was, after all, a very intriguing person to stare at.

Draco had done his fair share of staring in his teenager years. With hatred, indignation, frustration, and satisfaction for a prank well done. He'd exchanged snide remarks with his friends as to Potter's "stupid hair" and "stupid scar", that his glasses looked out-dated by at least a decade and his clothes more likely to have been pulled from a house elf's wardrobe than that of a teenage boy.

When those exchanges had stopped, Draco wasn't entirely sure. Pansy would likely have been able to tell him – she had a good memory for such things – but Draco was at a loss. At some point they'd simply ceased. It might have been because Potter's interest in pursuing their warfare in fifth year had waned. It might have been that sixth year had presented a whole new tide of difficulties that Draco was forced to prioritise.

It might have been because Draco began to find something less objectionable and more appealing about messy hair and out-dated glasses, and to wonder just why the Boy-Wonder would possibly dress himself in the same shirt he'd owned for the past five years. Draco knew, for he remembered many of Potter's shirts; the blue and white-hemmed one was particularly prominent in his memory.

While Draco pretended to fill out his crossword, it was instead to regard Harry Potter from beneath lowered lashes. He could appreciate, just as he had over the past weeks, that their animosity had well and truly died and that in so dying, the exasperated appreciation for 'messiness' and 'out-dated' grew more pronounced.

Did Potter even comb his hair? It didn't look like it, the scruff curling every which way across Potter's forehead and licking his nape. Draco didn't quite object to that; in anyone else, it would have been a cardinal sin to be so unkempt, but Potter was somehow different.

His fashion sense hadn't improved by much, but it had certainly changed. No more blue shirts with white hems, oversized and threadbare as though he'd already worn them for years. Potter still dressed plainly – far too plainly for a world-famous wizard – but there wasn't anything remarkable about his attire. When he took off his apron after stepping from the kitchen every afternoon, unbuttoning the white chef's shirt that an apprentice really shouldn't be wearing but Draco couldn't quite bring himself to object to, it was to find him in a simple black t-shirt and black slacks. It was utterly boring and plain. Why it looked so good, Draco didn't know.

Potter no longer wore his out-dated glasses, though. He no longer any glasses at all, for that matter, which should have been a good thing but…

No. Draco didn't regret that change. Just as he didn't regret the absence of the familiar, pale lines of Potter's scar that he'd seen only so briefly weeks before in their interview. He _didn't_. It was just that –

"Did you need something, Draco?"

Draco twitched. He couldn't quite help himself, even after days of Potter calling him by his first name. Eloise didn't comment upon it anymore, and Wilson never had. Even George seemed to overlook it sometimes, with barely a vague word every now and again generally taking the form of, "So Dray's short for Draco, is it? Should we call you that now, then?"

"Dare to do such a thing, boy, and you'll be fired on the spot."

Potter gave a muffled snort from across the kitchen at Draco's words, and Draco pointedly ignored him. George peered up at him with subdued concern. "So just Dray, then?"

"Mr. Malloy, if you would," Draco reminded George for the millionth time. "Or 'sir'."

George forgot. He always forgot, or purposely overlooked the reminder. He still called Draco 'Dray', and Draco couldn't even find he objected as much anymore. It was better than his real name being used. Merlin save him should Merrington catch wind that Draco Malfoy was in town. They might not know who he was but the Wizarding world would be on that golden nugget of gossip like a Niffler on a pocket of galleons.

Potter still called him Draco, though. He persisted, and Draco couldn't even protest because – maybe he'd grown to like it, if just a little. A very, _very_ little, and as much because it gave him unspoken permission to reply in turn.

"I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about, Harry," he said, taking a deliberate sip of his tea.

A touch of satisfaction still welled within Draco at the sharp attentiveness Potter gave him at the sound of his own name. He glanced up from the book he was reading with a flicker of dark eyelashes. Even across the entire expanse of the shopfront, Draco felt momentarily ensnared by his gaze. Potter had nice eyes, after all. Draco had always known that, even if his mental description of them hadn't been anything so complimentary as 'nice'. They were surprisingly sharp, vivid pale of green. Unique, even. Almost pretty, though Draco would of course never use such a word aloud unless –

"You're staring again," Potter said.

Draco blinked. "Excuse me?"

"I can feel it from all the way over here."

"Is that your magical senses tingling?" Draco replied, peering casually into his teacup. It was easier to deflect than admit the truth.

"Don't be ridiculous, Draco. You know magic doesn't work like that."

"How do I know what you're capable of? For all I know, you're a precognitive, half-centaur ghoul hybrid with a propensity for utilising unrealised sixth senses."

Potter stared at him, eyebrows rising, and Draco deliberately turned his attention back to his crossword. He couldn't have said a word of any of the clues offered, but Potter didn't need to know that.

"What the hell was that?"

Draco bit back the urge to smile. "What?"

"Firstly, precognition is largely bullshit."

Draco felt his lips twitch. "Are you trying to tell me that dear old Trelawney was lying to herself?"

"Most of the time? Yes. I'm not saying that some people don't _occasionally_ have the gift. _Occasionally_. Just that most of the time it's bullshit."

Draco couldn't help himself. He had to look up at Potter then, and when he did he felt both blessed and sorely regretful that he had. Potter was smiling his crooked half-smile, and Draco couldn't help but stare. Again. He didn't even spare a glance for Wilson as he stepped into the shopfront from the kitchen with a swing of saloon doors; Wilson either didn't care or overlooked the 'magical' conversations that sometimes arose between himself and Potter. Those conversations weren't often, but enough for Draco to deem Wilson somewhat more worthy of his confidence.

"It's a miracle, Harry," he said. "We actually agreed on something in school."

"The things that bring people together…" Potter trailed off with a shake of his head.

"What's second?"

"Second?" Potter arched an eyebrow.

"When one initiated a response with 'firstly', generally it entails further listing."

Potter's smile grew slightly wider, and Draco didn't even pretend it didn't delight him a little. Just as he no longer bothered to pretend that, on such rare occurrences as back and forth exchanges – no arguments, but actual conversations – he strove to extend them for as long as possible.

" _Secondly_ ," Potter said with a touch of emphasis, "Half a centaur is a redundant statement. That would just be a human."

"Or a horse," Draco said.

"Are you calling me a horse?"

Draco snorted into his teacup. "You're many things, Harry, but possessing equine morphology is not one of them."

"Can I take that as a compliment?"

"You can try. Fuck, if you consider not being likened to a horse a compliment, I pity your childhood."

Potter's smile died slightly – regrettably – as he cocked his head a little. "Do you pity me?"

"What?"

"Is it pity or sympathy, I wonder? Or are you just running your mouth?"

Draco chose to ignore that, and mostly because to admit that 'I wouldn't be averse to hearing more about your childhood, you tosser, and not because I care but just because' would be positively mortifying. "What's thirdly?"

Potter was silent for a moment, thoughtful, before finally speaking. "Thirdly, I don't see dead people."

Draco frowned. What in the…? "Was that a reference to a movie?"

"Have you seen it?"

"The Muggle one? About the sixth sense or whatever?" Draco didn't even spare Wilson a glance. Wilson had certainly heard worse than 'Muggle' over the past weeks.

Potter's smile grew once more, and Draco already found his own widening in response before he caught himself. "Look at you, so cultured in modern cinematography."

"The movie's a decade old, Harry," Draco said with an exasperated sigh. "It's hardly exceptional."

"It's a far sight more than another Draco Malfoy I used to know."

"Immersion in the Muggle world does that to a person, unfortunately," Draco said. He wasn't blushing. Dammit, but he _hoped_ he wasn't blushing.

"I don't think it's unfortunate," Potter said. "I actually kind of like it."

The room seemed to still. Wilson still worked, the radio still quavered with Bach, and the scent of sweetness still seemed to roil like a moving body in the air, but to Draco it froze. He found what little attention he still spared his crossword utterly abandoned, could have even dropped his teacup and likely wouldn't have noticed. For a moment, the room seemed to revolve entirely around Potter, echoing with his words.

Potter had straightened in his seat, slightly. His book was closed and on the table before him. His smile was vanished and in its place was a quiet thoughtfulness the likes of which Draco had never seen before Potter himself had arrived in Merrington.

That was Harry, he'd discovered. Or who he'd decided was Harry. Because something else Draco had noticed was that there were three Harry Potter's. Or three Oliver Haighs', or whatever he wanted to call himself.

Haighs, Oliver-bloody-Haighs, was the pâtissier. He was focused and efficient in the kitchen, and possessed surprisingly clever hands that crafted their own magic the likes of which Draco had only grown to appreciate for his own training. There was a certain degree of enchantment induced by his working, and when Draco wasn't lost in his own focus, he watched Potter as he kneaded dough or churned a bowel of choux pastry, of ladled melted chocolate onto profiteroles in a practiced motion that he likely could have enacted in his sleep.

The incarnation of Oliver Haighs was a master that all but danced over the title of 'apprentice' Draco still dubbed him with. Haighs had a taste for pastries that clearly arose when he tried barely a bite of a batch to ensure it was 'just right', or when he briefly pressed a finger into his dough to determine if it was perfect enough or needed more work. When he tossed flour over a counter in a wonderfully deliberate cast that avoided sprinkling even the smallest of showers onto the floor, too.

Haighs had an even more cultured taste that Wilson, possessed more knowledge than Draco had instilled into Eloise, and was years beyond what George could accomplish. He was more than the partner that Margaret was; Draco worked _with_ him rather than simply in conjunction with him.

But Haighs was somehow different to Potter. How Draco saw 'Potter' was as a reflection of the schoolyard rival that Draco had once know. Potter pushed Draco with barbs and banter thrown over his shoulder, but rarely quite so sharply as to induce another verbal battle the likes of the one they'd found themselves embedded in that first week. It still happened, of course, but not quite so badly.

 _That_ Harry Potter was a memory of Draco's past. A memory he'd pretended he'd hated but hadn't truly felt anything more than a longing for a lost childhood and the part Potter had played in it. Draco felt a thrill for their banter. He revelled in it. It was strange, perhaps even wrong, but Draco found Potter's presence in his kitchen – in his life, as it were – almost as beneficial as he did Oliver Haighs'.

And then there was Harry.

Harry was different to Haighs, but mostly because he rarely showed himself when baking. He was different to Potter, too, but mostly because the sharpness and teasing taunts, the incessant sarcasm of his tone, were all but absented when he arose.

Harry was quieter. He was more thoughtful, more mature, even. He possessed a depth to him, bore a weight upon his shoulders, that Draco hadn't considered was possible of the war veteran Harry Potter.

He was almost subdued at times, grew lost in thought at others, and Draco had noticed he often surfaced of an afternoon with the absent detachedness of an unsmiling face and distant gaze drew out of the shopfront windows. In those moments, Draco stared the most. It was somehow impossible not to stare.

Harry, Draco had decided, was what was left over after the Wizarding world was finished with him. He was Potter without his fame, Haighs without the pastries and sugar-coated fingers. Harry was…

Draco found he liked Harry. Surprisingly, maybe even a little horrifyingly, he liked Harry. And apparently…

 _"I actually kind of like it."_

Apparently Harry kind of liked him back.

Draco wasn't blushing. He wasn't quite breathing either, but he made certain wasn't blushing. Clearing his throat, it was one of the most difficult attempts he'd made in the past decade for Draco dropped his gaze from Potter's stare. "Are you corrupting me, Potter?"

That funny little laughing sigh that Potter always made arose after the briefest of pauses. "What happened to 'Harry'?"

"What about it?" Draco muttered. Was that a croak in his voice? Why in God's name was his voice croaking?

"I kind of liked that, too."

Draco's gaze snapped upwards. Potter – no, it _was_ Harry – regarded him with barely a shadow of a smile, that deep thoughtfulness adding the barest of frowns to his brow. "You what?"

"I like it. Prefer it, I mean. When you call me Harry."

"You… what?"

"Have I caught you speechless, Draco?"

Had it been Potter asking, Draco would have snapped a retort, not quite insulted but proudly objectionable. But because it was Harry… "I – no, of course not. I don't –"

"I thought maybe you might have liked it that I called you Draco, too?"

He posed it like a question, and that was why it didn't raise Draco's hackles. And because it was a question, because it was Harry who asked, Draco couldn't carelessly brush it aside, either. He swallowed tightly, wished he could take another sip of his tea to alleviate the dryness in his mouth, but couldn't force his hand to rise.

"I do," he finally muttered, and the words were an odd combination of saltiness and sweet upon his tongue.

Harry smiled. It wasn't a Potter-smile, but something else. Not quite crooked and mischievous, but somehow soft and comfortable. There was not a part of Draco that objected to staring at that moment. "Alright then. Draco."

Draco swallowed again. He nodded. He ignored Wilson – was Wilson still even in the room? – and the hand that squeezed his pen almost trembled. Something so small it was ridiculous seemed to have arisen between them, and yet Draco felt shaken upon his foundations.

"Alright then," he echoed. Still a croak, still a little hoarse. "Harry."

Draco thought it was a very good thing that the Wizarding world didn't see Harry Potter smile in that moment. There was no way they would have let him leave them for the past years if they had.

* * *

"What the fuck is this, Potter?"

Harry was biting his bottom lip in an entirely distracting manner, but Draco wouldn't allow himself to be misled. Or not entirely, anyway. Harry could bite his lip all he wanted, and Draco would barely even think about the sight of it – the hint of white teeth upon red skin, the further hint of a smile that tugged incessantly at the corners of his lips. He barely even saw the amused light in Harry's eyes, or the barest quirk of an eyebrow, didn't admire his casually confident lean against the counter.

It wasn't like Draco saw it. Or he might have seen it, but it wasn't like he was distracted. Not _really_. It was probably a much more suitable idea to focus upon the mess that Harry had just pulled from the oven.

It still steamed slightly. The scent of something distinctly sweet – and just a little charred – rose with the coiling swirls of that steam. Expectedly, Draco thought, because the loaf of whatever it was he could see as distinctly burnt in places. It was actually _burnt_. Draco had never allowed anything to burn in his kitchen _ever_.

"Did you make a mistake, Oliver?" George asked from where he peered around Draco's shoulder.

"I'm sure Mr. Malloy would let you try again if you wanted," Eloise said with all the presumptuousness that she was entitled to. She knew her place well, did Eloise; knew it well enough to know that Draco wouldn't pull her up on her presumption.

Draco almost would have done so just to make a point, except that he was staring at Harry's… whatever it was.

Harry shook his head as he casually crossed his legs at the ankles, hands propped behind him on the edge of the counter. "It's supposed to be like that."

"Burnt?" George asked.

"Yeah."

"And so… messy?" Eloise asked in the same tone, skirting closer to the monstrosity that Draco felt utterly horrified to even behold.

"That too."

"Potter, I won't allow you to sell that," Draco said, staring at the… the _thing_. "Hell, I'm not even letting you give it away. Throw it out."

Harry shook his head. "No."

"Potter –"

"Look, I know you're just calling me that because you're pretending to be annoyed when you're actually freaking out," Harry interrupted him. "Calm down. I know what I'm doing."

He was right, unfortunately. In the past week, Draco had been calling him Harry and nothing else, except when a customer arrived in the store and necessity demanded otherwise. Not even Eloise and George's company was really a cause for otherwise; they called him Oliver, despite Draco's own terming. It had grown almost comfortable to do so.

What was distinctly _un_ comfortable was that Harry saw right through him. He saw that Draco resorted to old habits when he was 'freaking out'. Draco wasn't freaking – of course he wasn't – but it was almost concerning that Harry could so easily perceive when he was unnerved.

"I would have to question that," Draco found himself saying. "The raisins are burnt."

"I know."

"There is no finesse to the shape at all."

"Yeah, I know. But rockcakes don't have a particular shape, either."

"You're comparing your loaf to a rock cake?" Draco thinned his lips. "That's not exactly a point in its favour."

Harry, damn him, smiled, and his burnt loaf became somewhat less pivotally important. "Listen, Draco, you gave me my head for one recipe a week."

"Yes, one _recipe_ , not a mess on a plate."

"That's how _pizza ebraica_ is supposed to look."

"You can call it whatever you'd like, it's still a disaster."

"Why don't you just try it?"

Draco wrinkled his nose immediately. He was deterred none by Eloise's brief bark of incredulous laughter, or George's, "No, I couldn't imagine Dray eating that". "I'm not eating your pizza."

"It's good," Potter said. "I swear."

"Harry –"

"Could you just try it?"

"Is this why you waited until _Saturday_ to bake it rather than trying on Monday?" Draco scowled. "Because you knew I'd object?"

"Draco –"

"How very Slytherin of you. You know, I do believe the Sorting Hat was sincerely wrong about you."

Harry's smile widened further. Again. His distraction techniques were superb, Draco silently acknowledged. "Just try it. You said something of the same thing about the _bruttiboni_ a couple of weeks ago, right?"

Draco opened his mouth. Then he closed it and pressed his lips together. Harry's _bruttiboni_ had been some of the ugliest cookies he'd ever seen, and an insult to the refined beauty of Draco's pâtisserie, but the taste… Tuscan Almond Cookies, they were apparently called, and surprisingly simple to make. Simple, and somehow utterly delicious. Whether it was Harry's particular recipe or the innate nature of the cookies themselves, Draco didn't know, but it had been a battle to resist bereaving his customers of the opportunity to try them. He, George and Eloise all had partaken of their fair share.

Suffice it to say that the _bruttiboni_ were added to the Oliver Haighs section of the display counter. That made four recipes now. Four that Draco had allowed Harry to repeat consistently. He would have to ration himself.

Unfortunately, the memory of the _bruttiboni_ incident had a definite dampening effect upon Draco. He scowled even more deeply at Harry – and Harry, the obliviously attractive idiot that he was, only smiled in return – but couldn't help considering the _pizza ebraica_ in a new light.

It was ugly. And very much like a rock cake, Draco noted. A load of sweet bread, dotted with burnt raisins and the prominent shapes of whole almonds and pine nuts protruding from the mass like shrapnel. Dried fruits – cranberries, Draco noticed, and apricots, primarily – had been thrown into the mix alongside a healthy dose of sweet wine.

It _was_ a mess. It _was_ ugly. But Harry had asked Draco to try it, and Draco had become somewhat susceptible to taking him up on his requests. His 'challenges' as he liked to think of them, because facing a challenge head-on was far easier to rationalise to himself that caving before a smiling request.

Draco took an almost tentative step towards the loaf. "If this kills me, I'm going to come back from the grave just to murder you," he warned, sparing Harry a glance.

Harry's smile widened into a grin. "It's not going to kill you. Maybe just batter you sensitivities a little."

"My sens –" Draco cut himself off with a huff. "If it tastes like shit, I'm killing you, too."

Harry chuckled. He sounded far too confident in himself in Draco's opinion. "What do I get if you like it?"

"Besides the opportunity to keep your head?"

"Besides that, yes."

"Respect?" Eloise suggested.

Draco and Harry snorted at once, and with such perfect synchrony that Draco almost laughed. "Don't be ridiculous, Eloise," he said just as Harry added, "That'd be a sight."

"A place on the Oliver Haighs counter, then?" George offered.

"No," Draco said instantly. "It's hideous."

"You'd deny it even if it tastes good?" Harry asked curiously.

"Your foreign baked goods are a menace, Harry," Draco said. "You've already got one ugly cookie –"

"I think the _bruttiboni_ aren't _that_ ugly," Eloise muttered.

"- I won't abide two," Draco continued, ignoring Eloise's contribution.

"Alright, then," Harry said, folding surprisingly easily. "What, then?"

Draco frowned. Was this a competition? A reward dependent upon Draco's taste buds? Harry Potter had become somewhat different when he'd integrated Oliver Haighs into his personality, but _this_? "You've got something in mind. What is it?"

Harry's smile became his 'Harry smile', not a hint of the Potter taunt to be seen. "Come out to dinner with me."

Silence met his words. Or at least it was silence for the barest of moments until Eloise gasped slightly and George uttered an overloud, "What?" Draco hardly heard them.

He didn't go out to dinner. He didn't break his routine. Harry Potter had already shaken up so much about Draco's life – enough that the niggling urge for 'change' had all but vanished within him – that Draco could hardly consider anything else quite so dramatic. But the offer of a dinner…

Dinner with Harry – not Potter or Oliver Haighs, but _Harry_ – was certainly tempting. Draco hadn't realised how desperately he'd wanted such a thing until it was offered to him.

Harry ignored both Eloise and George to stare expectantly at Draco instead. Were his eyes a little greener, maybe a little more intense? Draco wasn't sure. Maybe he'd just been staring too long. Giving himself a mental shake, he strove with every muscle in his body to adopt an expression of bored disinterest. With hooded gaze falling upon the _pizza ebraica_ once more, he grunted nonchalantly. "It's not likely to happen, of course –"

"It might," Harry said.

"- but if it did… Alright, Harry. You've got yourself a deal.

Eloise gasped again. George's, _"What?"_ was even louder this time. And Harry still smiled. There was maybe just a hint of Potter in that smile, but Draco found he didn't really mind.

Instead of commenting further, he accepted the knife Eloise offered him. He cut the steaming loaf of ugly mess open and took far, far too long cutting bite sized pieces with perfect precision. So long that Harry actually sighed audibly with a muttered, "Bloody hell, the ceremonies you enact…" If anything, his words made Draco cut even more slowly, smothering a smile as he did.

That smile faded when he took his first bite.

Eloise tried a piece. George did too. Then George took another piece. And another. And Draco…

He found he couldn't quite blame him.

It was sweet. Far sweeter than he'd expected, and soft, and moist, and a riot of flavours surprisingly refined for how it appeared. Not at all like the majority of Draco's dishes, and yet it tasted… it was…

Draco chewed slowly. He couldn't quite bring himself to look to Harry and instead turned his regard back to the loaf. The ugly loaf that was was surprisingly…

"Well?" Harry asked.

Draco swallowed. "You're not selling that in my shop."

"What? But Dray –"

"But Mr. Malloy, it's actually –"

"Tonight's dinner had better be less of a mess than your hideous loaf."

Eloise and George stuttered to a halt simultaneously, but Draco hardly heard them. His attention was far too focused upon Harry where his smile – a mixture of Oliver Haighs' pride, Potter's teasing, and all things Harry – widened once more. "I'm sure I can think of something."

Draco had never been happier to be proven wrong in his life.


	5. Chapter 5 - Service à la Russe

**Chapter 5: Service à la Russe**

 _~A process of sequencing, in which the diner will feast upon multiple individual dishes rather than a single whole. Such sequences could exceed ten dishes or more. Service à la Russe treats all diners equally~_

* * *

To say that Draco Malfoy was nervous would be a falsehood. Draco Malfoy didn't get nervous. Once upon a time, he might have succumbed to fear, but nervousness? Certainly not. Dray Malloy especially didn't get nervous.

That was what Draco told himself, anyway. He told himself countless times as Saturday afternoon trickled into evening, and eventually he began readying himself for the night.

A night out. A night out to dinner. What did that even mean? Draco wasn't ignorant – or no more than he was nervous, anyway – but Harry's words were a little confusing baffling. Going out to dinner? With his _boss?_ They weren't really friends, were they? Draco didn't think so, and they didn't even like each other – something that Draco had to remind himself with increasing frequency of late. There was no reason…

No reason…

No…

If he was to have been asked by anyone else – Violet Lovett, for example – Draco would have considered it a date. Because it was _Harry Potter_ , however, it had to be otherwise. Something else. Something _confusing_. Harry was a famous, beloved citizen of the Wizarding world gone unexpectedly and suspiciously to ground years ago. He was straight, everyone knew that, and he'd been Draco's rival at school. His schoolyard enemy, even. There was _no way_ it was a date.

As Draco stared at his reflection in his bathroom mirror, he kicked himself for the recurring murmur of _'He's straight'_ that replayed over and over in his mind. It was irrational that _that_ particular argument was the most convincing to him. The most frustrating, too.

It was all Harry-bloody-Potter's fault. Draco's head was a jumble of truncated sentences and half-finished thoughts, and all because of Harry Potter. Harry, with his messy hair and his crooked smile and his three facades that Draco couldn't help but long to explore and discover just which was the real one. Harry, who was a damn-good pâtissier even if his choice of pastries and desserts was questionable, and whose clever baking hands Draco couldn't help but stare at.

Harry, who Draco could only sigh not-quite-regretfully over for the fact that he'd cropped up in his unconscious mind remarkably frequently of late. Draco didn't know what the hell to do about that.

What is a date? It wasn't, surely. But what if it was?

Staring at himself in his mirror, Draco scrubbed his hands over his eyes. Even to his own mind he sounded like a flustered teenager going on their first date. It had been years since he'd spent the night in the company of anyone besides his own hand, but that was hardly an excuse. His old pâtissier master in Paris hadn't quite called him Casanova, but the understanding had been insinuated.

It was thoroughly humiliating. Draco was only comforted by the fact that it was a publicly known fact that Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived to defeat the Dark Lord Voldemort, sucked at Legilimency.

Draco sighed. He glared at his reflection, at the paleness of his cheeks that saw too little sunlight and seemed to seeped almost seamlessly into his hair. The absence of his Second Skin was stark, and every little change – his nose, his chin, the wideness of his eyes – seemed all the more apparent beneath the illumination of the bathroom light.

Was he attractive? Too right he was. Draco knew that, and he didn't need validation from anyone else to be convinced of the fact. He only wished the Casanova ease he'd once possessed hadn't so mysteriously disappeared. With another sigh that was more of a fortifying breath, Draco wiped his hand across his face once more. He wasn't nervous. He _wasn't_. His mind knew it, even if his body wasn't as convinced of the fact.

Without another thought – or ignoring those thoughts that arose – Draco turned to leave his flat.

He'd very nearly worn dress robes. It had been a brief internal battle Draco had waged with himself between dressing with maximum impressiveness and maintaining his usual chameleon-like Muggle camouflage. At the last moment, however, he'd settled for comfortably fitted jeans and a dress shirt that he'd worn so rarely the starchiness had still remained until he'd charmed it aside.

He was relieved for his decision when he arrived on the curb outside of his pâtisserie. Harry was already waiting in a pair of his own jeans that would have left every _Daily Prophet_ reporter scrambling for their cameras, and when he turned towards Draco it was to see he'd dropped his own Glamour.

Had Draco less self-control, he would have stopped in his tracks, for when Harry turned towards him he was really _Harry_ ; the scar, the angles of his thin face, the line of his brow and his not-quite-straight nose. It was somehow unexpected to see the real thing when Draco had seen nothing but Oliver Haighs for weeks. The only thing really missing was the glasses.

"You're not wearing your Skin," Harry said, cocking his head as he watched Draco's approach.

Draco folded his arms across his chest as he drew to a stop. He wasn't discomforted but – well, Harry had been right on the day of his interview. It was strange to be without his Glamour. Strangely revealing, as though he was exposing a part of himself not quite dirty but private nonetheless. "So are you."

"It feels a little strange," Harry said, echoing Draco's thoughts. He gave a small smile, a Harry smile, before it twisted ruefully. "But if I'm not going to drop it for you, then who would I do it for?"

The statement was likely meant to be offhanded. Most likely, Harry spoke in reference to their mutual magical capabilities, and the fact that no one else in the entirety of Merrington could cast a lick of that magic themselves. But it sounded different, and to Draco's already thoroughly addled mind that he found himself stuck with, he couldn't help but cling to the unspoken and likely unintended insinuation.

So he ignored it. That was, of course, the logical thing to do.

"Where exactly are we going tonight?" Draco asked.

Harry stared at him for a moment longer before he seemed to shake himself into the present. "Have you got your wand?"

Draco frowned. "Potter, if you even think of suggesting somewhere in high-density Wizarding Britain then I'll –"

"I wasn't, actually," Harry interrupted him. "Just that it might be easier to Apparate then to drive. Faster, you know?"

Draco's suspicion didn't lessen any. "Where were you thinking?"

Harry stuck his hands into his pockets and shrugged his shoulders in a manner entirely casual and utterly eye-catching. Did he even realise it? Unlikely, in Draco's opinion. Critical as he'd been of him in their schooling years, Draco had always noticed that Harry never quite seemed to comprehend when he caught someone's eye. It was probably the reason he'd only had two girlfriends in his entire teenage life.

 _Girls_ , Draco reminded himself. _Both girls_. Such a distinction didn't necessarily mean anything final, but Draco was a realist. Or he'd been forced to become one, at least.

"Eloise suggested this place," Harry began.

Draco immediately sighed in a huff of exasperation. "Oh, are you fucking kidding me?"

Harry smiled. "I take it she's been trying to convince you to go too?"

Draco closed his eyes briefly. "That Italian joint, yes? What was it called…?"

" _Il Gusto Italiano,_ " Harry said with surprisingly fluid enunciation. "Or so she says."

Draco stared at him. The urge to object simply on principle welled within him, but with an effort he suppressed it. Harry had asked. He'd asked him to go out to dinner, and even if it was to an Eloise-recommended restaurant, Draco wanted to go. Abruptly, he sorely did. "Have you looked into it?" Draco asked flatly.

"Like, for reviews?" Harry asked.

"And menu. The chef on tonight, the availability, the open hours. Whether they've been deemed capable of providing dishes that are actually edible –"

"Anton-Jacques."

Draco paused. "What?"

Harry was smiling again. He'd never stopped, in fact. "The chef's name is Anton-Jacques, and he's been a specialist in Italian cuisine for nearly a decade."

"That's –"

"The menu is pretty broad as far as I saw," Harry continued, idly kicking a foot at the curb. So casual. So bloody eye-catching. "It's pretty decent so long as you like carbs, I guess. They're open till eleven on Saturdays and –"

"Seating?" Draco cut in, because he couldn't stand to have no contribution at all.

Harry glanced up at him from where he'd been regarding his kicking foot. His smile widened. "I've already booked us a table."

Draco pressed his lips together. Harry had done his scouting, even if it was only for the bare minimum of necessities. Draco needed to know that minimum; he had to in order to keep some degree of control over the situation. It was enough, really. It _was_ enough.

Draco was stalling, he knew. He stalled because he had no idea what the hell he was to do with himself. What the hell he was supposed to do with _Harry_.

"Alright, then," he said, because even if his mind had no ideas, his tongue was more than capable of speaking the rudiments. "What are we waiting for, then?"

Harry's teeth flashed through the growing darkness. Draco could almost swear that the very air around him warmed. He held out a hand in offering. "Alright, then. Shall we?"

Draco grasped his hand without comment. Just as well, too, and a necessity, for if _Draco_ was to be the one to Apparate them that evening, he should be the instigator of the contact.

Which he did. Harry might have organised the dinner, but Draco was definitely going to put his two-cents in. They were sucked into the crushing tube of magical transport with a crack that had likely not been heard in Merrington for years.

* * *

 _Gusto's_ , as the waiter who directed them had called it, was nice.

For some reason, Draco hadn't been expecting it to be. And yet it was. Very nice, even, from the rich, polished oak of the wooden floors to the open airiness of the restaurant proper. Ornate chairs and uniquely shaped tables dotted the interior in a vague pattern, and the illumination of hanging overhead lights lit the entirety of the scene in brilliant relief.

That the feature wall boasted a predominance of red was a little unfortunate, but Draco could move past such petty distastes of his childhood. The colour red itself had been far from truly objectionable to him for years.

It was the smells, however, that truly sold Draco. Those smells gushed from the passage into the kitchen in a melody of aromas richly lathered in tomato and basil and oregano. The smells were delectable – to say nothing of the _taste_.

Anton-Jacques, whoever he was, clearly knew his way around a kitchen.

Draco had been uneasy. Not nervous – not truly nervous; he _wasn't_ – but he'd been uneasy. Going out to dinner for the first time in _years_ , spending time with another person in a non-professional environment, being forced to share a conversation on equal footing – Draco wasn't oblivious enough to believe that he held quite the superiority a master should have over his apprentice for Harry, but there still remained their workplace hierarchy. Over dinner, there was none of that.

Except that it wasn't awkward. Surprisingly, it wasn't awkward at all, even if it _should_ have been. And that was because Harry talked about baking.

"So," he said as soon as they'd been seated and the waiter left them to peruse their menus. "I have a question."

Draco glanced up from the sleek lines of the menu. His mind, as it always did upon entering another business establishment, was storing away features for consideration. He'd been meaning to update his own hardcopy menus simply for the sake of it; _Gusto's_ certainly had an intriguing design with its textured filigree.

He regarded Harry for a moment as Harry in turn pondered his own menu. "What?"

"Don't sound so wary," Harry said without glancing up. "I just wanted to ask you about your _choux à la crème_. For some reason – I don't know if it's intentional, but it tastes sweeter than what I've generally experienced but not sickly sweet. I guess I was just wondering…"

And it flowed from there. It was easy, _so_ easy, that in the midst of diving into talk of baking and pastry-making, Draco all but forgot that he was so unpracticed in the art of casual dining as to be rusty. He hadn't expected that. He hadn't expected it at all.

When their wine arrived, conversation shifted to the vintage. When dinner was served, it shifted again to the conflict of pasta over rice.

"What kind of a person who goes to an Italian restaurant doesn't get pasta?" Harry asked, pointed a loaded fork of fettuccine towards Draco.

Draco frowned through a mouthful of deliciously rich risotto, rolling the tumble of mushrooms and cheese around his tongue. Maybe he should consider adding something savoury to his menu? It was a thought, at least. "Clearly, someone who has a preference for rice," he said.

" _Incredibile_ ," Harry said with that fluid enunciation he'd spoken with earlier that evening. Draco couldn't help but glance up from his dish once more to stare at him. He watched, the urge to ask sitting on the edge of his tongue, as Harry shoot his head and picked at his bowl before replying. "You could have at least gotten a pizza."

Draco wrinkled his nose. "Pizza? How could I possibly eat pizza without getting crap everywhere?"

"Um… with your fingers?"

"And get crap all over my fingers?" Draco clicked his tongue and shook his head. Harry only laughed.

The night drew on with surprising speed, and didn't hitch of stumble in the least. Dinner faded into disregard, ceasing with the arrival of the waiter to take their plates away. Draco almost paused the man as he picked up Harry's half-eaten bowl until Harry nodded his agreement.

"That was a whole dinner you just wasted, Potter," Draco said with a frown. Before he realised what he was doing he reached across the table and poked at Harry's arm. "No wonder you're skinny."

"Beg pardon?" Harry raised an eyebrow.

"I remember the picture in the paper just after the war. You undertook Auror training, didn't you? Beefed up and all that?" Draco raised an eyebrow, feigning casualness that became less possible as he heard his own words resounded back to him. He swallowed aside the momentary awkwardness. "I had wondered how you managed to actually get _thinner_ when constantly surrounded by baked goods."

"Oh, you'd wondered, had you?"

Draco chose to ignore him. That was the easiest way to pretend he hadn't spoken as he had. "Now I can see it's simply because of your weird eating rituals."

Harry stared at him for a moment. Then he tipped his head back and laughed – a loud, liberated laugh that Draco couldn't blame the waiter and other diners for turning towards in the slightest. It was captivating; the laugh and the _smile_.

" _I'm_ the one with weird eating habits?" Harry said through bubbles of laughter. "Says you, the one who allows himself to eat one –"

"Excuse me if I –"

" _\- one_ pastry a day and no more." Harry held up a single finger pointedly. "Don't think I haven't noticed. It's very precise of you."

Draco didn't flush. He made sure he didn't. Pressing his lips together, he raised his chin slightly. "It's called control. Partaking in moderation."

"Ritualistic –"

"It's _not_ a ritual," Draco huffed, folding his arms and frowning. "Besides, you're worse. Don't think _I_ haven't noticed that weird counting thing you do with the madeleines –"

"At least I don't throw out a batch if it has 'a little too much sugar' on top of it."

"That's professionalism," Draco objected. " _You_ wipe your hands on exactly three pieces of paper towel after washing them –"

"It's hygienic," Harry said through chortles. "At least I don't have a fixation with 'straightness' in how the pastries are placed in the bloody counter display."

"At least _I_ don't have a problem with the colour yellow."

"It's boring! And what about yours with the colour red?"

"You always taste test with your little finger –"

"Have you realised that you hold your breath when you pour –"

"- always has to be in even numbers –"

"- make sure it's _exactly_ seven o'clock –"

Draco hardly heard his own words. He spoke, continued to speak, but he hardly heard himself. Just as he barely heard Harry's replies, though the sentiment behind them was enthralling. Harry had watched him. He knew his quirks, or 'rituals', however he liked to call them. Draco hadn't even realised some of them, just as he hadn't registered just how many of Harry's he'd noticed.

This was a different kind of arguing. It was different to schoolyard rivalry, to colleague conflict, to casually flung condescension. And Draco found he liked it. He liked it a lot, and almost as much as the way Harry smiled crookedly as he spoke, or tipped his head backwards when he laughed, or sometimes dropped his gaze as though bashful but not quite when Draco made a particular observation.

Draco hardly noticed the night as it chewed itself away. It was almost a surprise when, pausing to take a sip of wine, he noticed that half of the restaurant had emptied and only quietly conversing couples remained over plates of pristinely shaped desserts.

Couples. Draco liked the feel of that, even if it was something of an assumption.

"You," Draco said in a somewhat calmer, somewhat quieter voice than their exchange had been a whole half an hour ago, "always double loop your apron."

Harry grinned, and whether for the ambiance or the wine settling comfortably in his belly, Draco couldn't even pretend he didn't love it anymore. "It's got a double purpose."

"Which is?"

"It seconds as a belt."

Draco scoffed. "Only you would forgo using a belt in place of adapting your apron." He tapped a finger against his wine glass. "It's because you've got a skinny arse, you know. Most arses are supposed to fill out their jeans properly, but yours –"

"Will you stop talking about my arse?" Harry said, which, if anything, had the opposite effect. "And besides, speak for yourself." With a pointed glance as he took a sip of his own wine, Harry rebuffed the accusation.

Draco, trying very hard not to think about arses in general, sniffed impudently. "This is my natural build, Harry –"

"You sound so proud."

" – of which I am deceptively well formed beneath my clothes, just so you know."

Harry blinked, his eyebrows rising. Draco realised what he'd said a moment later. He hoped his cheeks didn't colour as much as the warmth within them bespoke did. This time it felt impossible to withhold.

Harry shook his head slowly. "Wow," he said in almost a whisper. " _Sei davvero qualcosa_."

The heat still in his cheeks, Draco scowled. "What the hell was that?"

"What?"

"That. I'm assuming it's Italian, yes?"

Harry grinned. "Something like that. Albeit very basic."

"Is the ambiance infecting your brain?" Draco asked, because he couldn't very well ask the question he _really_ wanted to know. The words _Where did you learn that_? practically strained against his lips.

Harry answered anyway. "I spent a little time in Italy, as a matter of fact."

"Is that so?" Draco arched an eyebrow. "That was before or after Australia, then?"

"Oh, after," Harry said, as though it should have been obvious. "It was about seventh on the list of my extended stays and not for quite as long." He paused and glanced towards the kitchen. "Did you want anything for dessert or will it be too much of an insult to your own culinary abilities?"

Draco wanted to ask more. After their bantering exchange had died into something both less and more, he definitely wanted to ask further. He didn't quite know why, but Draco wanted to know – about these 'extended stays' and about Italy, and Australia. About where Harry had disappeared to the past seven years, why he'd dropped the Auror program just when he'd finished training, why he'd picked up and left and what he'd done since. Draco wanted to _know_.

But he let himself be distracted by the promise of sorbet and _panna cotta_ served with more strawberry sauce than his cultured taste deemed necessary. It was a sincere regret that the subject was dropped; Draco was an eternal food critic, and especially for desserts, but he _did_ want to know.

Luckily for him, the chance to learn more arose entirely of its own accord.

There hadn't been a wealth of clientele that evening, but _Gusto's_ had been full enough. It was only when the trickle of remaining diners began to leave that Draco realised just how long he and Harry had been attending themselves. A comfortable silence had settled between them – strangely comfortable, because Draco was rarely silent in company unless focused upon baking – and it was only broken when Harry spoke with thoughtful pondering.

"You know, I wouldn't have picked you to be a pâtissier."

Draco drew his gaze from where he'd been staring into the dregs of his wine. He wasn't tipsy, he knew, but the flood of alcohol had worked its way into his bloodstream. It was likely what enhanced his comfort. "I could take offence at that, Harry."

Harry drew his own gaze from staring detachedly across the room at the increasingly empty tables. "You could. The old you certainly would have."

"The old me," Draco muttered. He frowned down into the dregs of his wine again. The 'old Draco', or that particular aspect of his past, was far from being one he wanted to contemplate. "Consider it a change of heart, then."

"A change of heart?"

Harry's voice was quiet. The 'Harry' voice, not Potter or Haighs. Draco had learned to differentiate them even better, now. It was because it was Harry who asked that he felt the unshakeable urge to speak. To confess. To have Harry know, because after Harry had already shown just how much he knew and how much he'd observed, Draco realised he liked being known. He liked it a lot.

Or maybe he just wanted to tell someone. Draco had never quite admitted it to anyone before.

Speaking to his wine, because even with his sudden desire he couldn't quite look at Harry, Draco nodded slowly. "Yes. Or an escape, perhaps. With a father thrown into Azkaban, a mother with rapidly ailing sanity that she vehemently refused to acknowledge, and most of Wizarding Britain glaring at me sideways if they spared me consideration at all, I left."

"To study in Paris, I heard," Harry murmured.

 _Heard from who?_ Draco wanted to ask, but he didn't. His tongue kept speaking for him, his eyes locked on the aubergine-coloured wine swirling with the gentle motion of his hand. "I'd never baked before in my life. Not until Paris. Back-to-back partying and pub-crawls, waking at four in the afternoon –"

"A hard life," Harry said quietly.

Draco snorted. "Indeed. But largely unfulfilling. It was… someone I spent the night with who put the idea in my mind. They baked. Crepes, it was. And something clicked in me."

Draco shrugged, and in his motion he rid himself of the need to explain all that happened in between. The hours of gruelling work, practice, scolding and encouragement from a master he'd not sought but somehow stumbled upon and been accepted by. The strange feeling of purpose that welled within him at doing something that might not have been magic but felt somehow magical nonetheless.

"I became a pâtissier in Paris, and then I came to Merrington," Draco surmised. "I don't quite know why I came back to Briatin, but I did. It feels right to be in here again."

His words faded into silence and, after a pause, Draco raised his gaze up to Harry. Harry stared at him with quiet contemplation, not even the hint of a smile upon his face but not a frown either. It made Draco thoroughly uncomfortable, though not in a particularly bad way; he felt as though Harry _saw_ him.

"You wanted a change," Harry said, cocking his head slightly.

Draco swallowed. He cleared his throat, then swallowed again. "I guess you could say that, yes."

"Becoming a pâtissier, moving to Merrington… a change from the Wizarding world?"

"Perhaps."

"Like how you decided to hire an apprentice, too?"

Draco spared himself a moment by taking a final sip of his wine. Hiring an apprentice had certainly wrought change, if in an unexpected manner. It had been that change he'd been looking for – or at least _something_ to relieve the itch within him. How could he have known that a 'Harry Potter' change would fit so perfectly? "I feel short-changed."

Harry's eyebrows rose. The contemplative cast to his face slipped into a smirk. "What?"

"It's your turn." Draco tipped his wine glass towards Harry indicatively. "I've told my story, now you tell me yours."

"You've told me next to nothing."

"But still something."

"Draco –"

"Harry."

Harry's smirk remained affixed. It was still playing across his lips when he shook his head, dropping his gaze briefly to the table between them. "Fine, then. I guess I'm the same."

"The same?" Draco arched an eyebrow.

Shrugging, Harry settled back in his seat slightly. His hands cupped around his wine glass in a frankly inelegant fashion that Draco strangely felt no urge to correct. "A little. The Wizarding world had just become too much for me, I suppose."

"So you went to Australia."

Harry nodded. "Australia. Then climbed up through Indonesia – Jakarta was incredible – and settled in India for about half a year. I did my time in Turkey, was put up in the Greek Islands for a time, and Florence for about half a year."

"Thus the Italian?" Draco interrupted.

"Thus the Italian," Harry agreed with a small smile.

"You're rather well-travelled."

"That's not even the half of it," Harry said, and there wasn't a hint of superiority to his tone as Draco might have expected. Or he might have before he'd grown to know Harry a little instead of simply Potter. "It was an experience. All of it. But like you said, Britain just feels right."

"I gather that upon such a pilgrimage was where you discovered your… interesting recipes?"

Harry uttered his little sigh-laugh that Draco had grown so familiar with. "Yeah. That."

Draco hummed thoughtfully. He'd never thought to ask because they simply _didn't ask_ , but with the floodgates momentarily flung wide, he had every intention of drinking every drop of water Harry let flow his way. "So. Inspired by the fruits of the world, yet catalysed in Australia."

"Catalysed?" Harry asked.

"You said that was the initial source of your inspiration, no?"

Harry nodded slightly, a small smile playing upon his lips. "Yeah, that."

"Oliver Haighs. The chocolate café."

Harry's smile widened. "The café. Yes."

Draco felt his eyebrow twitch. "What is it?"

"What?"

"Don't give me that. You're hiding something."

Another huff of laughter and Harry's smile widened a little more. Widened, and became somehow retrospective. "I might have lied a little about that."

"Lied? How uncouth."

"Well, not _lied_ , exactly, but not told the whole truth either."

"Even worse."

"Shut up, Draco," Harry said with a sigh, shaking his head. Then he fell silent.

Which, of course, made Draco want to know all the more. "What is it?"

"Hm?"

"Don't play dumb with me, Harry. What is it?"

"You want to -?"

"Yes, I want to know," Draco said with his own exasperated sigh. He didn't bother even attempting to hide the agitation that had his fingers tapping at his wine glass.

Harry shrugged casually before speaking. "Haighs was my inspiration. About as much as the bloke I met there was."

The restaurant silenced. Or at least it did to Draco's ears. He stared at Harry and every hint of expression and retrospect upon his face seemed to be flung into sharp relief. "A bloke?"

Harry nodded. "He was my baker. Like your one-night-stand, I guess. To bad he had a fiancée."

Draco stared. He blinked. His eye niggled in the nearly insuppressible urge to twitch. Then, "What?"

"He changed my perspective, I guess," Harry continued, seeming to speak almost more to himself that to Draco. "About a lot of things, but especially about what was important. About doing what you want to do. That, and… well, I guess you get a change of perspective when you die." He shrugged again, casual, disregarding. Almost as though he hadn't just triggered a literal bomb of manifesting questions with his casual words.

Draco blinked again. Blow after unexpected blow, and he had _no idea_ what to think of either statement. "What?"

"Yeah…"

"You – what? Harry, what do you mean you -?"

"Do you want to get out of here?"

Harry's interruption as so unexpected, so removed from where Draco's mind had turned, that for a second the words barely made sense. He blinked in a struggle of comprehension: a man, a fiancée, and… died? Harry had _died_? What, in the war? So the speculations of that fact… they'd been… _What?_ Draco straightened sharply in his seat. "That's not a very subtle diversionary tactic."

Harry smiled again. It wasn't a smile quite as wide as those previously had been, but there was something genuine in its quietness. Something knowing, and accepting, and just a little… poignant? "Yeah, I know," he said. "Shall we?"

Draco didn't argue further. He wanted to know – Merlin, but he wanted to know more – and yet he wouldn't ask. For once, he held his tongue on his demanding impulse. Harry was clearly done for the night, which meant that Draco would have to simply draw the knowledge from time and observation instead. He'd already proved he could do just that tonight already; proved it as much to his own surprise as Harry's, for that matter. He didn't have to push Harry outside of his comfort zone. More than that, Draco realised that he didn't really want to.

So he nodded when Harry tipped his head questioningly, rising from his seat. "Keep your secrets then, Harry. For now."

Harry smiled.

* * *

The darkness of night was thick and heavy on the roadside half an hour south of Merrington. The cluster of boutique restaurants and barely more than a handful of houses that made up the hamlet they'd left behind them were silent for their distance. The flavour of _Gusto's_ remained upon Draco's tongue, but little else.

All was silent. Still. Dark. Until that darkness exploded in a firework of colour.

Magic, smooth and strong and sparkling with red, orange, yellow, whirled briefly. It roiled, curled into a shape – a dragon? – and the road en-route to Merrington was briefly illuminated by more than simply streetlights. Then it died just as quickly.

"That's it?" Draco taunted. "That's the best you can do?"

Harry grinned. "I'd like to see you do better."

Another burst, another flash of bright light, and sparks of green and silver coalesced into the rearing shape of a snake. It rose, neck arching and jaw widening, towering over the height of the nearest streetlights. Then it, too, died.

Draco smirked with satisfaction as he lowered his wand, turning back to Harry. Through his sudden night-blindness, he could hardly see more than a blurred outline of Harry at all, but he knew he was still grinning. He could feel it.

The fact of the matter was that, for almost the whole hour they'd been wandering – walking instead of Apparating from the Italian restaurant for reasons Draco couldn't quite define – Harry had been smiling. The fact of the matter was that Draco had been almost smiling too.

Some of that had to do with the magic, he would admit. A lot to do with it, even. Magic always made Draco feel such a way, and when Harry had broken their mutual silent to encourage as much, he'd needed little prodding.

"Merrington's pretty seriously non-magic, isn't it?" was the first thing Harry said after his admission in the restaurant.

Draco almost hadn't heard him. He was so lost in his thoughts, so caught upon replaying Harry's words and attempting to analyse every angle of them, that it was only his instinctive attentiveness to Harry that informed him he'd spoken at all.

"Yes," he finally replied when he'd drawn himself to the present. "It feels almost a desecration to disrupt it with magic."

That was what Draco said, anyway, and what he felt. Magic in Merrington wasn't something to be flung about willy-nilly. Merrington was almost sacred in that regard, and it was only Draco's sore need to cast magic at all, to use it as he needed to use air to stay alive, that had him persisted in doing so at all.

Draco wasn't thinking about magic, however. Even with Harry's thoughtful words, he wasn't thinking about magic at all. _Harry_ played a prominent role in Draco's mind, alongside the greater spread of questions he sorely wished – _needed_ – to ask.

Primarily, those questions caught and hung upon death, because death? Harry had died? There'd been rumours but nothing solid and – and he'd actually _died_?

Draco didn't know how he felt about that. It seemed to somehow change something. Death was big, was _huge_ , and the crossing over of a soul was something that couldn't be reversed even with magic. It somehow seemed to shroud Harry in another layer that Draco had previously been oblivious to, and he didn't know what to do about it.

Was he supposed to think, to act, any differently? Draco wasn't sure about that either, and it was one of the reasons he couldn't stop thinking about it. He liked how things were. He liked how they were between himself and Harry. Was that supposed to change with Harry's admission?

Alongside that, and, foolishly, somehow just as importantly, was the other bombshell Harry had dropped. About a man. A man with a fiancée. A man with a fiancée and something to do with Harry that Draco was torn between finding horrifying for the possibility and glorious for that same suggestion.

It couldn't be, could it? Could it really? Was Draco reading too much into it? Perhaps it had been a platonic relationship Harry had shared with this mystery man – a man that Draco had abruptly decided he hated while simultaneously wishing him the best of luck in his marriage. Maybe they're really just been friends, and Harry's inspiration extended up to and only including that inspiration.

Draco hoped it wasn't. He desperately hoped it wasn't. And even though he coached his fervent thoughts not quash their hopes, another wealth of whispers rose in his mind.

 _He did break up with that Weasley woman for reasons never quite explained. And it hasn't been heard of him pursuing another relationship._ Draco pointedly ignored the fact that word of Harry at all had been unheard of for years. _Maybe it could be true. Or maybe he just needs the right person to turn to. He spoke of change…_

Draco abruptly wished very much that he could be the source of that change. He wouldn't admit it, of course, but he longed nonetheless. The idea was almost painful.

"It must be hard," Harry said, and for the briefest of seconds Draco thought he might have actually been responding to his thoughts. The possibility vanished a moment later, however, when Harry continued. "Not using magic all the time – it's hard."

"You'd know all about that, would you?" Draco asked.

In the passing light of a streetlamp they walked beneath, Draco saw Harry nod and smile slightly. "Most of the people I've worked with were Muggles, actually. It's… hard. Keeping a secret like that."

Draco nodded. That at least he could understand. He'd growing very familiar with keeping one particular secret as hidden as possible of late. In ignoring the voice that demanded to know _why_ he had to keep it secret at all – _just tell him and it will all be perfect!_ – Draco felt he knew very well. "There is that. I tend to use it at every opportunity in isolation, however."

"Isolation?" Harry asked. "That's a little lonely, just playing with magic by yourself."

"Well, it's not as though Merrington has much of a selection of fellow witches and wizards to 'play' with." _Thus the basis for its appeal_ , Draco didn't add.

Harry turned towards him, silently watching for a long moment, and Draco couldn't quite read his expression through the darkness. He was almost on the verge of casting a _Lumos_ charm when a car, what would have to be the only vehicle on the road that night, sped past and illuminated Harry's face.

He was smiling still, but almost mischievously. In that brief glimpse, Draco saw something like a taunt. Just as he heard it in Harry's voice when he spoke. "I bet you've gotten rusty, just practicing on your own."

Draco wouldn't stand for that. He might be distracted with a well of questions that _needed_ to be asked, but the slight to his magical proficiency he wouldn't stand for. "Is that a challenge?"

"Do you need to be challenged?"

"You'll regret it when your competency flounders before my own."

"Oh, we'll see about that."

Which was how Draco momentarily – almost, but not quite – forgot the questions he longed to have answered. It was how, on that empty stretch of road to Merrington, the darkness of night was flooded with more magic than it had likely ever see before.

A beam of light flared like the headlights of a car pointed directly upwards.

The crackle of thunder preceded rather than followed a strike of lightning.

Heatless flame sprung briefly to life and curled through the dry grass on either side of the road without catching alight.

Colours and shapes, fireworks and illusions, the flying, almost invisible missiles of rocks and less natural roadside discards that were flung against hastily erected shields. It wasn't a fight, not really, but the thrill of magic encouraged less than wholly civilised behaviour.

A flurry of canaries – tens, hundreds, even, and so yellow they almost glowed in the darkness – burst into existence.

"Is that the best you've got, Harry? _Birds?_ "

A whirlwind swept down the road, tearing at jackets and jeans and causing them to stagger just slightly.

"A feeble little wind, Draco? How droll."

Back and forth, one after the other, and then sometimes not sequentially at all but in synchrony. They strolled at a slow pace down the dark road, and the magic undulated around them as though revelling in air untouched by preceding sparks. Draco hardly considered the risk of being seen casting magic in a Muggle-dominated region. It didn't really matter, because he revelled in the moment, in the magic, in the _company_ , more wholly than he would have thought possible.

Harry had been right. It was different, lonely even, to use magic by himself. Draco hadn't even realised until he cast otherwise.

His wand pausing as it rose on the tail end of Harry's momentary hill, conjured into the centre of the road before flattening once more, Draco glanced at him sidelong. Was Harry watching him? He should have been watching. Draco hoped he was – watching his magic, and maybe something else, too. Draco was a damn-good wizard, and the thought of Harry watching bubbled a surprisingly delightful warmth in his belly.

"How terribly unsubtle, Harry," Draco sniffed, stepping with a deliberately firm stomp on the bitumen as they passed where Harry's 'hill' had been. "If you're looking for a proper charm –"

"Oh, you know better, do you?"

Harry's tone – his tone, not his expression, for the light between streetlamps had shrouded them once more – was teasing. If anything, it was the Potter of old that spoke in that moment, and yet, despite that, Draco didn't dislike it. Far from dislike, even. He felt the touch of warmth in his belly spread further.

"Of course I know better," he said.

"Do you have a favourite?" Harry asked.

Draco arched an eyebrow, even knowing that Harry wouldn't be able to see it. "A favourite charm?"

"Hm."

Draco slowed in step until he paused. Harry slowed alongside him. Peering through the darkness, Draco frowned thoughtfully, and more than a little uneasily. To admit a favourite charm was something of a personal confession. The wealth of charms was exceptional, and to choose only one? It spoke of a person. Almost as much as would be confessing a favourite pastry.

Draco had never liked such revelations, and yet at that moment he wanted to confess to Harry. How strange, given how his younger self would have wailed and flailed in protest; that Draco Malfoy wanted Harry Potter to know him better? To understand him on a level that was almost intimate for its revelation? When had Draco decided he wanted _that_?

He didn't know. Draco didn't know when curiosity had shifted into longing. Somewhere during the night, perhaps. Maybe before that, when Draco realised that there was more to Harry than he'd hitherto considered; that he was a skilled baker, and that he was maybe even more than simple a passing change like the turning of seasons.

Whenever it had arisen hardly mattered, however, and Draco found himself raising his wand. Lifting, feeling the well of magic rise within him too, and the wordless enchantment spilling forth.

A flood of sensations washed over him, carried on ribbons of magic, and Draco instinctively closed his eyes. There was a tingle of warmth, the brush of heat from an oven door opened. That heat carried with it the scent of bread, of caramelised sugar, of thick cream and gelatinous jam, and underneath that something more. Something other – woodiness, maybe, a cleanness that was wholly his flat. The smells touched his tongue as tastes, and a whisper of classical music curled into his ears, the clatter of a pot on a stovetop, the grazing scoop of a wooden spoon around the barrel of a bowl. And for a moment, just a moment, Draco saw what was his:

His kitchen.

His shop.

His flat and the view from the table that he sat at every single day.

And then it faded.

The feelings remained for a moment, but only briefly, and with them the blanketing embrace of comfort, of safety, of stability and reassurance was left in an echo in its wake. A 'Peace-of-Me' Charm, his mother had once called it. The form and feeling of that Peace had changed much over the years, but the charm itself remained his favourite. Throughout the war, through the trials, through the confusion and aimlessness thereafter. Until it had settled, that was; Draco had been feeling, seeing, hearing – even _smelling_ – the same scene for years now.

"That was…"

At Harry's voice, Draco's attention was draw back to where it had never truly strayed. A rush of embarrassment welled within him and he had to remind himself that what he'd seen, what he'd experienced, Harry hadn't. Or at least not _Draco's_ version of it.

"What did you see?" Draco asked, as much to quell his embarrassment as for real curiosity. Or as much until he asked; when the question spilled forth, Draco realised he truly, almost desperately, wanted to know.

"Hm…" Harry hummed. "That's a, ah…"

"What?"

"I don't know if I want to tell you."

Draco frowned. "That's hardly fair after you just asked me what my favourite charm is."

"Maybe, but –"

"An imbalance is what it is, Potter. Unfairness, unjust, un-"

"Alright, alright," Harry half-laughed. "What if I show you mine?"

"Your -?" Draco began, but Harry was already raising his wand. The dark shape of his hand swirled just slightly. Words died on Draco's tongue as a shimmering mist of the purest white spilled forth.

He would recognise a Patronus in a heartbeat. Anyone would, and not just for the sight of it. It was in the beauty, the warmth, the comfort that suffused Draco simply upon seeing the tendrils of protection coagulate as they roiled to produce a corporeal form. It was almost the same as his Peace-of-Me Charm; almost, except for one primary difference that had always made Draco curse the very charm.

Not in that moment, however. He stared at Harry's Patronus, at the undeniable beauty of it, and then he felt his eyes widen. The creature touched its feet to the ground as it landed, reared its head, and –

"It's not a stag."

Draco spoke before he'd realised it. Turning towards Harry where his face was now illuminated by the light of his Patronus rather than wreathed in the shadows of night, Draco stared incredulously at the soft, almost loving expression he wore.

"No," Harry said simply, acknowledging Draco's knowledge of his old Patronus' form as he must have known everyone knew. "It's not."

"When –?" Draco began, then bit his tongue.

"When did it change?" Harry shrugged, a hand rising and reaching for the Patronus as it trotted towards him. "I'm not sure, exactly. To be honest, though, I'm surprised it didn't change sooner, what with the shape it chose and all."

"The shape," Draco echoed, and slowly – with difficulty, for Harry's expression was almost impossible to turn from with its quiet rapture – drew his gaze towards the Patronus.

It looked like a wolf. A tall, leggy, slightly matted wolf, broad of chest and with a snout long and raised not in defiance but with confidence. It was… Draco didn't much like mangy mutts, but he could appreciate the beauty of it. Most likely because it was Harry's, but it was beautiful nonetheless. Except for one fact in particular.

"There's only one," he murmured. "Don't wolves typically travel in packs?"

Harry turned dark eyes towards him. "A wolf?"

"That's what it looks like." _A wolf, and terribly lonely for its solitude._

"Huh." Harry turned back to his wolf. The creature turned pale eyes towards him, ears pricking attentively. "Go figure."

"It's not?" Draco asked.

"It looks like my godfather to me."

Draco opened his mouth to speak but found no words presented themselves. Godfather? Meaning Sirius Black? If that didn't raise another wave of questions, Draco didn't know what would. There were just _so many_ , and why Harry's Patronus had changed to a singularly lonesome form, why his _godfather_ was apparently a dog, and the importance of the Patronus Charm to him at all rose with it.

But Draco didn't ask. He had more questions than he knew what to do with, but he didn't pose them. Instead, he turned back towards the Patronus. It truly was beautiful, and Draco loved and hated it just a little for that. It was beautiful… and unattainable.

"I've never been able to do it," he said with as much nonchalance as he could manage. He shrugged, though the tightness of his shoulders barely enabled the gesture.

The Patronus Charm had always been something of a sore spot for Draco. Was he such a miserable person that he simply couldn't manage it? That night with Harry had been wonderful, unexpectedly and completely so, and quite removed from Draco's expectations. He'd _enjoyed_ himself. Draco knew what enjoyment felt like because he hadn't been _that_ deprived as a child. And yet he'd never been able to cast a Patronus. Even his favourite Peace-of-Me Charm wasn't quite an embodiment of his place of 'happiness'; contentedness, reassurance and comfort, maybe, but not happy.

Harry's wolf – or dog, or whatever it was – died into wisps of pale light that in turn dissipated with Draco's words. For a long moment, they simply stood in the darkness across from one another, neither moving nor making an effort to continue further down the road. Draco didn't even know how far they were from Merrington. Maybe they should just Apparate home; it had been a long enough night.

Even as he had the thought, however, Harry stepped towards him. Slow steps, almost tentative, and though his face was barely a pale smudge in the darkness, Draco felt his expression. He felt the soft smile, the depth of compassion, and far be it from feeling repulsed, something in Draco urged him to embrace it. The curl of his fists at his sides was likely all that held him back.

"Maybe," Harry began, then paused.

Draco frowned slightly. "What?"

"Maybe you just haven't found the right memory yet?"

Draco scowled. At Harry, but not really _at_ him. More correctly, Draco glared upon the situation at large, but even that was 'not really', either. He drew his gaze briefly down the road simply as somewhere else to turn. "Are you saying I'm not a happy person?"

Harry uttered his little sigh-laugh, the laugh that was somehow both soothing and – a little horrifyingly – arousing as it curled about Draco's ears. "Not unhappy, maybe. But I think you could be happier."

Draco snapped his gaze back towards him. "Excuse me?"

"Just a suggestion," Harry said with a shrug.

"A rather presumptuous –"

"And I might be able to fix that."

Draco's words stuttered upon his tongue. His throat tightened, closed entirely, and for a second he couldn't even breathe. Harry was… Did he just…? It surely wasn't a proposition, _surely_ , but Draco heard… Could he possibly mean…?

He swallowed thickly. "And what would that be?" he just managed to force out. Draco hoped to whatever gods might possibly exist that his voice didn't sound as desperately strained as it sounded to himself.

Harry grinned. Draco felt that, too, felt more than saw it, and the warmth of it was tangible. The night wasn't exactly cold, but the heat of Harry's smile was radiant. "Muggle Ploy," he said simply.

Draco blinked. "What?"

"Surely you've heard of it."

Draco blinked again. Muggle Ploy. Surely Harry – Harry-bloody-Potter, upstanding image for propriety and fairness, not to mention friend of the Ministry's Muggle Liaison Chief, Hermione Granger – wouldn't suggest such a thing. _Surely_ not. "You can't be serious."

Harry chuckled. It almost sounded like a giggle. "I very much am."

"In Merrington?"

"Yeah."

" _You_ want to play Muggle Ploy –"

"Unless you're scared, Draco."

There was provocation there. Challenge, certainly, and just a little bit of temptation. Draco heard it, and he was thoroughly enthralled. Muggle Ploy was a barely legal evasion of Muggle notice, whereby participants performed increasingly obvious and daring acts of magic in their vicinity. Draco hadn't played such a game in years, but the thought was suddenly entirely enticing.

"That's very Slytherin of you, Harry."

Harry smirked. Draco felt the warmth of just as he had his smile. "Not Slytherin, Draco. Wizard."

"You're teasing Muggles."

"Not really. I'm simply benefiting from their oversight regarding anything magical by convincing themselves it didn't _really_ happen to –"

"To _tease_ ," Draco emphasised, and the urge to grin was one he couldn't withhold.

Harry snorted. "Fine. Whatever you want to call it. I'm just saying, a wizard needs to use magic, Draco. Why not have a little fun with it?"

Draco had no objection to that. The niggling demands to ask questions of Harry, to learn more, and the momentary sobriety induced by the reminder of his Patronus incompetence, were smothered beneath the blanket of possibility.

 _Muggle Ploy. It's so juvenile, and yet…_ Standing in the dark in the middle of nowhere, Draco had to admit that it was so appealing as to be almost laughable. The thought almost overrode Draco's sore need to ask his questions, the longing that he couldn't quite shake, the desire to know, to understand, to be _important_.

That urge to know was almost as great as the flood of understanding. Draco wanted to know; he wanted to know _Harry_.

But for the moment, that need was put aside. Smiling, longing, all but desperate to agree when every memory swore him to his steadfast stoicism, Draco raised a suggestive eyebrow. "Bring your best, Harry. Muggle Ploy against a Slytherin? You don't stand a chance."

Funnily enough, the thought of winning wasn't at the forefront of Draco's mind. For once, beating Harry didn't seem all that important; it was the game, he realised. The game held the thrall.

Draco found he almost couldn't wait until Monday.


	6. Chapter 6 - Dessert

**Chapter 6: Dessert**

 _~From the French word_ desservir _, or 'cleaning the table', dessert is often considered to function in filling diners to their utmost brim, ensuring no stomach is left wanting~_

* * *

"Whoa, it's especially bright in here today," George said on Monday morning. "Did you do something to the light globes?"

"Why… is the washing already finished?" asked a slightly baffled Eloise on Tuesday as soon as she walked through the door. "How did you even have the time for that?"

Wednesday found both with eyes popping from their heads. "How many éclairs did you make? That's _impossible_."

"I'll get the – how did _that_ get over there?" George asked, incredulous as Thursday found him rifling for the icing sugar already at Draco's counter.

And Friday: "I came in this morning to find all of the stock already unpacked, Mr. Malloy," Margaret said. "Now, how did that happen, I wonder?"

Draco didn't offer her an explanation. He didn't tell her that he'd enchanted the pantry to unload itself as soon as it was away from Muggle eyes. Just as he hadn't told George that the lights were magically enhanced because it made them _better_ , or Eloise that cleaning with magic was simply so much more efficient, or that _Accio_ -ing his ingredients was vastly easier than having George scurry for them, or Eloise tripping over herself to do the same.

Harry, as it turned out, had been right. In the absence of an understandable explanation, Muggles inevitably convinced themselves they either hadn't seen the effects of magic or that there was a justifiable – albeit unknown – reason for observed anomalies.

It was absolutely hilarious.

Muggle Ploy had been a pastime of many a witch and wizard for generations. The degree of crudeness, abruptness, and induced confusion varied across contexts, but one thing would always remain the same: it was a game the magical played to refine subtlety at the expense of the non-magical.

Draco was surprised that Harry had suggested it. He was even more surprised that he kept up his promise come Monday morning. It seemed so unlike the upstanding figure that Harry Potter was supposed to be – had once been – that it was almost unhinging.

Strange – but wonderful.

As it happened, Harry didn't play cruelly. Why, he hardly even seemed to play to the Muggles at all; it was truly a game for himself and primarily _against_ himself. Harry worked his magic amidst Muggles in an attempt at subtlety not to belittle the oblivious but to hone his own skills. He smiled slightly when George or Eloise voiced surprise that, "The floor is weirdly clean today" or "How did you do that so fast?" and that smile was flashed to Draco as much as kept quietly to himself. But Harry never poked fun at the ignorance. He never laughed or taunted or belittled.

 _That_ was Harry Potter-like. The combination of the two scenes was almost disjointed – and Draco realised he loved it.

There was so much about Harry that Draco liked. So much that he'd _realised_ he liked. Such as that he was gorgeous, something he hadn't quite noticed at school and something apparent even through his reaffixed Second Skin. That he was a glorious baker, which Draco couldn't help but admire from afar just as he did when he sunk his teeth into the simply divine, spicy pastry intricacy that was the _kolompeh_ Harry had made as his recipe of the week.

Draco liked how he smiled his crooked half-smile that promised as much as it kept hidden. He liked the glances Harry shot his way, the conspiratorial shared moments of lowered eyelids and smothered companionship. He liked the subtle shift in Harry's expressions that he was just beginning to understand; the slight narrowing of eyes in focus, the downward tug of the corner of his lips in dissatisfaction, the momentary blankness that bespoke deep, thoughtful contemplation.

Hell, Draco even loved what he didn't know. All of the questions that had clamoured for attention the Saturday night before – Draco realised he loved that he didn't know the answers to them as much as he longed to understand. That he _didn't_ know, that there was a whole history to uncover, was something that Draco found nothing if not captivating.

Harry was a mystery as much as he was a steadily unravelling riddle. And Draco loved that. Loved maybe even more than simply liked.

In a week of Muggle Ploy, amidst flung criticisms of, "That was so obvious, Harry," and "I literally just saw your wand, Draco, and you're calling _me_ obvious?" Draco realised that fact. He realised it and surprisingly, it didn't bother him. Draco hadn't wanted all that much change, even if he recognised that he needed it, and he didn't like to share, but this –

This he liked. He thought he might even be prepared to share his world if he could keep a hold of _this._

 _I am fallen so hard it's almost embarrassing_ , Draco thought to himself on Saturday morning as he expertly whipped his thick batter of chocolate cream. _And the worst and best part of it is that I don't hate it at all._

Relationships had never been a Draco Malfoy priority. Or they hadn't been _yet_. Draco was rapidly reaching the conclusion that, should it be with a certain someone, he wouldn't mind so much. He wouldn't mind at all.

That Saturday, magic thrummed in the air as it had increasingly all week. Draco worked at his counter, spared a glance to acknowledge George's turned back across the room, and _Accio_ -ed the chocolate saucepan from the stovetop. He waited as Eloise scurried past – and nearly fell on her face, the clumsy girl – and wiped clear the smear of flour she'd left in her wake with another flick of his wand. And then, just because he could, he shot a spell over his shoulder with sharp intent and –

"Fucking hell, Draco, what was that for?"

Draco bowed his head over his bowl, if only to hide his smile from the eyes of his employees. There was no hiding that he was guilty for the harmless hex he'd flung Harry's way, but Eloise and George didn't know that. They likely didn't even know what a hex was, or were decidedly oblivious enough to it not to be bothered. Why, they'd not commented on Draco's and Harry's use of one another's names for weeks.

A second later and Draco felt a sting on his rump that caused him to yelp, to almost drop his spoon, to spin towards Harry across the room. Harry, who was half turned to glance over his shoulder with hand and hidden wand still raised alongside his eyebrow and a definite smirk on his lips.

"You bastard," Draco called towards him.

"You started it," Harry flung back.

"Do you have a fixation with my arse?"

"Me? You're the one who brought it up."

"Exacerbating the situation insinuates fixation."

Draco didn't care that Eloise and George had paused in their respective duties, watching them fling words at one another. He didn't care that they were very, _very_ close to revealing a critical feature of the Wizarding world to those who should remain oblivious. Draco didn't care about any of that.

His whole world was divided into two: Harry, and baking with Harry.

Draco had been looking for a change. He'd been looking an apprentice that wouldn't really be an apprentice. He simply hadn't anticipated that not-apprentice to entail so much.

* * *

Change, Draco had discovered, could happen abruptly as easily as it could arise in increments. Abruptness was a change that tended to happen _to_ him, but incremental? Draco was entirely in control of that. The subtle nudges, the sliding towards a greater perfection – Draco was practiced at that.

"He's going to see you," Harry said, breaking into his thoughts.

Draco ignored him, if only for the moment. Some changes required concentration…

"That's not subtle at all."

Draco stared at the counter, concentrated, nudged, and -

"I can see your wand from all the way over here."

There. The last of the pastries slotted perfectly into line in their counter window with more precision that Eloise could ever manage. Draco liked that kind of simple perfection. There was much to be said for good presentation.

He turned towards Harry, and the magnetisation of his gaze was so fluid that it felt almost instinctive. Admittedly, Draco hadn't looked much elsewhere in the past week. " _I'm_ the one lacking in subtlety?" he said, raising his teacup once more and taking a sip. "If anything, it's you who would give away the Ploy with what you were saying."

"Wilson can't hear me," Harry said, dropping his gaze back to the book spread before him on the table.

Draco spared the oblivious Wilson – cleaning, always dutifully cleaning – a sidelong glance. Indeed, the boy didn't appear to notice Harry's entirely unconcealed admissions anymore than he did Draco's magical pastry straightening. In fact, Wilson's frowning intent was focused wholly upon his mop and bucket.

"You Muffled us," Draco said, turning back to Harry. Harry didn't glance towards him from his book but he smiled nonetheless.

It was all about presentation. Draco liked good presentation. An immaculate, symmetrical cupcake decoration, a wrinkle-free apron, a clean kitchen, or an agreeable countenance. There was a certain degree of satisfaction to be gained from such refinement.

Draco had always strived to embody refinement in the grooming of his hair, in his posture, his dress. In the production of his pastries, too, and the spread of his shop. Even to his interactions with customers – though admittedly, in regard to particular interruptions like Violet Lovett, measures had to be taken. Draco _appreciated_ good presentation.

Harry wasn't well presented. Not at all. It should have been an insult to Draco's critical eyes, and yet he couldn't help but drink up the sight of him at any opportunity given.

Harry's hair was a constant mess of overlong locks not quite curly but far from groomed straight. His clothes had never, even back in their school days, fit him perfectly, and he didn't seem to care, instead making do with an adapted wrap of his apron ties, or rolling up sleeves. He spoke honestly – if agreeably – to the point of frankness, and he didn't appear to have much regard for how others perceived him.

Perhaps most infuriatingly, Harry didn't seem to care about untidiness. Particularly distressing, Draco found, was when he would disregard the streak of flour to his brow, or a smear of chocolate on his cheek. Even more distressing because Draco found his mind thoroughly engrossed with the thought of licking it off for the rest of the day.

By all rights, Draco shouldn't appreciate Harry's 'presentation'. As his employer, he should maybe even pull him up for it. But he didn't. Bantering and even arguing as they did nearly constantly, Draco was finding there was little he could truly object to about Harry's company.

That Harry had taken to spending the afternoons in the pâtisserie with him – reading, idly talking, playing Muggle Ploy – was even less objectionable. Draco was discovering that spending his evening in the company of a one Harry Potter was fast becoming his favourite pastime, second only to baking.

Or was it second? It was still second, he thought. Probably. The fact that Draco found himself even suggesting they spend more time with one another – "Stay back and help me with the savoury muffins, Harry" or "You don't need to leave in a flurry. God, how unseemly, to all but flee from the workplace of an afternoon," – was a little embarrassing.

Even more so because, if the small, knowing smiles were any indication, Harry saw straight through him.

That Saturday afternoon, basking in the satisfaction of a week of magic-wielding Muggle Ploy, Draco didn't want Harry to leave. Not that he appeared about to for his captivation with reading – what was so interesting about that book, anyway? – but Draco found himself caught with the urge to withhold his potential disappearance. He'd never really considered opening his pâtisserie on Sundays, but that an entire day without looking at Harry's stupidly messy head faced him after that evening…

Draco didn't like that. Which was probably why he spoke as he did.

"Your Muffling Charm is actually sufficient?"

Harry's gaze flickered up briefly. "What?"

"Wilson can't hear us?"

"Are you questioning my abilities, Draco?"

Draco rolled his eyes. "Only always. You've hardly given me reason to do otherwise."

Harry, to Draco's satisfaction, straightened in his seat and flipped his book temporarily closed. "After a week of Ploy, and after seeing me using magic around Muggles at every opportunity –"

"Simple magic, at that," Draco pressed his lips together firmly to withhold a smile. "Where's the challenge?"

Harry arched an eyebrow. "Challenge?"

"Simple magic is –"

"Draco," Harry interrupted him, and Draco found he hardly even cared. Once, maybe, it would have annoyed him. Indignation for interruption was still a part of who Draco was, but from Harry? Not so much. Most likely because he was thoroughly distracted by the smile playing across Harry's lips. "What's the challenge?"

Draco glanced towards Wilson. The kid was good; he made mopping the admittedly already pristine floor a battle against dust. Entirely focused, he was, and Draco wholly supported his attitude. It was better still because it afforded he and Harry relative privacy. "Have you ever baked with magic before?"

Harry was silent for such a long moment that Draco turned back towards him. Or at least his silence was part of the reason for returning to his staring. A touch of a frown, not angry but thoughtful, crinkled Harry's brow, his gaze slightly distant as though lost in thought. "That's unexpected of you," he said, a note of curiosity to his tone.

"What is?"

"Most bakers I know of, even wizards and witches, claim that –"

"'Baking is a task of the hands and not the wand, and to skirt the process is to deprive the result'," Draco quoted.

Harry smirked. "Are you quoting famous bakers now?"

Draco rolled his eyes. "Gal Bortisque isn't just a 'famous baker'. He was a master of his trade and the best damn Wizarding pâtissier of our generation."

"Is this respect or adoration I hear?" Harry teased.

"Shut up, Potter."

Harry laughed. He dropped his chin onto his linked fingers, smiling across the three tables between them with open amusement. There was warmth in that smile, as radiant as Draco's kitchen itself. "I learned from Muggles, so I haven't really baked with magic much."

"But?" Draco prodded, because he heard it regardless of Harry's pause.

"But," Harry said slowly, "even with my inexperience I'd wager I could beat you at any challenge hands down."

Draco's eyebrow twitched. He couldn't withhold his own smile this time. "That's a very dangerous accusation, Harry."

"Call if overconfidence."

"We'll have to rectify that, then."

"What are you both taking about? Mr. Malloy, your smile is a little scary."

Draco glanced towards where Wilson muttered barely audibly from across the room. His attention was still fixed upon his mop and bucket, but apparently he hadn't been so oblivious after all.

Draco didn't deign to reply, and Harry only lowered his gaze and grinned as he flipped open his book. They didn't speak further for a good hour but, even unspoken, the challenge hung between them.

Which was how, when Wilson took his leave with the dying sun, Draco found himself facing off against Harry in his very own kitchen. The ovens still hummed with warmth, and the cleanliness that Wilson had left in his wake positively shined in the even greater vibrancy of magic-enhanced lighting.

Draco felt excitement well within him. How long had it been since he'd had a bake-off? A contest, as it were, because even unstipulated, Draco knew that such was what it was. He could see it in the similar excitement in Harry's eyes as he leaned with casual confidence against the edge of the counter across from Draco. Magic almost crackled in the air between them.

"What's the guidelines, then?" Harry said, speaking into the momentary, challenging silence between them.

"You're actually bowing to my superior knowledge?" Draco asked.

"Hardly. I have every intention of correcting you when you set something stupid. I'll have my say, don't you worry."

Draco could have jumped on the criticism, but he didn't. Baking was his life, his joy, and the thought of baking with – _against_ – Harry of all people flooded him with something that bereft him of possible disgruntlement. Or real disgruntlement, anyway.

"Alright, then," he said. Folding his arms, Draco glanced briefly around the room. "A dozen cupcakes, iced and piped without the fondant you're so fond of."

Harry smirked. "I raise you half a dozen _palmiers_. Puerto Rican style."

Draco twitched. "With that honey crap -?"

"What, too difficult for you, Draco?" Harry taunted him.

How could Draco _not_ accept the challenge when Harry said it like that? "Fine. A _profiterole_ tower with at least three different fillings."

"A sheet of baklava."

"Five macaroon _only_ and each of them alternatively flavoured."

" _Pastelitos_ , but with homemade jam –"

"Scratch that, swap half of the profiteroles for _relegieuse –"_

"If you want _challenge_ then _schwarzwälder kirschtorte_ is –"

"I set the ultimate challenge of _riz à l'impératrice_ to top it off –"

Back and forth, one after the other, the exchange swapped and changed and rose in intensity. It was a ridiculously exchange, and would definitely result in a cataclysmic mess. There would be mayhem. There would be wasted ingredients. Hell, Draco didn't even know how they would explain the sheer amount of desserts and treats to the rest of his workers come Monday.

But he didn't care. Excitement and actual happiness welled within him with each slight widening of Harry's smile. And just before it felt about to explode –

"Are we going to talk all night or are we going to bake?" Harry asked.

Then everything exploded.

Baking with magic – it was as different to manual baking as was riding a motorcycle was to a pushbike. Or a whole fleet of motorcycles, rather. Without thought, Draco spun towards the nearest counter, drawing his wand as he was never truly able to in the company of Eloise, or George, or Margaret, and he flung spell after spell over his shoulder. Behind him, he felt Harry wordlessly launched his own.

The air spawned with a mass of bowls and cutlery. The pantry burst open and bags of ingredients, sacks of pistachios and bottles of sauce leaped forth. Sinks ran and the refrigerator open and closed – once, twice, three times – in quick succession, spewing bottles of milk and sticks of butter from its shelves.

Draco threw himself to the task. It was more akin to conducting an orchestra than baking itself, which was part of the reason that Draco didn't favour the method. He revelled in the paradoxically clean mess of dough on his fingers, the manual motions of churning ingredients in a bowl, using his hands to direct, to scoop, to ladle or pour.

But this time, the challenge was _on_. For once, it didn't matter.

Draco threw butter in a saucepan to melt. He swiped at the air and a trio of trays darted his way. Sugar poured into cups and tossed themselves with flours, salt pinched itself and jumped into the mix, and knives flashed as they chopped at chocolate and nuts, slicing butter with heavy clunks that echoed throughout the room.

With magic – not like but _with_ – Draco watched as a whole second pâtisserie itself was birthed through the use of his charms. Baking was a manual practice, but this? The use of magic itself was nothing short of thrilling.

Draco strode across the room with bowls following in his wake to throw a tray in the oven. Three half churned recipes and a spillage of milk on a counter and he was striding back again to drag them out. The smells of baking goods, of burnt sugar and deliciously steaming morsels, pumped into the air like the most wondrous perfume imaginable.

Draco worked in a frenzy, and across the room, Harry spun in his own wild dance of magic. For a moment – somewhere between piping his macaroons and pummelling the fruit for his jam – Draco saw him. He couldn't help but paused.

If the smells and the miracle of kitchen work was a wonder, Harry was the perfect artist to fit the masterpiece. There was none of the refined, deliberate directing that Draco recognised in himself. None of the cleanliness that even he, horrifyingly, couldn't maintain that evening. Harry threw spell after tumbling spell around himself with barely a glance, twisting on the spot almost as though he were dancing, and using his hands to knead, to chop, to scoop and to whisk with practiced efficiency as much as with magic itself. The sight of him, an animated king amongst the subjects of his enchanted food and utensils, was breathtaking. And his smile…

Draco could have stared for a long time, but he somehow managed to shake himself free. He stared at Harry that so much of the time every other day that it shouldn't have been as captivating as it was. It _was_ enchanting, but Draco had a challenge. He had more than a dozen recipes to bake, to assemble, to instantly chill with the handy use of magic. It simply took more of a struggle to turn back to his mess of a workbench than he'd expected.

Melted chocolate thickened the air with its rich flavour. The sweet tang of berries chased its aromatic tail. The ovens hummed and the crackle of Cooling Charms hissed with instant, chilled steam. It really was a masterpiece, Draco knew, almost wished he could have simply stood back and watched himself, watched _Harry,_ as they worked the absolute best kind of magic.

It was perfect – until it became something less perfect yet so much better.

It happened when Draco magically threw a bowl to the sink. That bowl, mindlessly following his direction, cared none for the tray of cupcakes Harry was _Accio_ -ing from the oven, and the cupcakes were similarly oblivious. They crashed in an almighty clatter that had Draco starting and spinning. Harry twisted to glance over his shoulder in turn.

Draco stared at the cupcakes cascaded onto the ground. He saw his bowl roll listlessly where it had fallen. He met Harry's gaze, saw his face, and the smear of something sticky and pink upon his cheek was abruptly the most important thing in the room.

Until Harry grinned. "Is this sabotage, Draco?"

Draco's breath had abandoned him for a moment, but he reaffirmed his grasp upon it with a slowly raised eyebrow. "Sabotage? I think you'll find that –"

His profiterole tower collapsed. Quietly, but Draco heard it like a parent heard their child's sleeping breath. He heard it just as he saw the direct point of Harry's wand.

Draco gasped. Harry grinned wider. Then magic was launched anew in an entirely different manner.

Bowls were flung. Bowls alongside spoons and whisks still dripping with cream. A rolling pin clattered sharply against a bench. A snowball of baklava syrup splattered where Draco had been standing seconds before until he'd scrambled to dodge out of the way. He launched his own _ganache_ missile in retaliation.

Then a cupcake – Draco's cupcake, iced to perfection – caught him in the back of the head. At the same time, a sugar donut clipped Harry at the ankles with the force of a rogue bludger and actually caused him to stumble.

The barest of pauses followed – and then Draco was launching himself at Harry with outrage that wasn't really outrage at all. He raised the spatula in his hand as he did so. "You son of a bitch, using my own desserts against me!"

"What kind of a person throws a _donut_?" Harry cried in retaliation, just as he leaped for Draco in turn. The bag of flour in his hand was a promise of exploding mess and possible weaponry, but Draco didn't care.

They collided with a crash to the sound of desserts battling around them in saccharine conflict.

It was the fiercest of grapples. There, in the middle of Draco's immaculate kitchen that was in that moment was far from immaculate, they wrestled for the spatula that had somehow become their unwitting goal in what Draco detachedly realised bore a resemblance to toddler warfare. He didn't care. It was _his_ , after all, and he was entitled. He would win. He fumbled for the handle, elbowed Harry in the gut to a huffed "Oomph!" and yelped as Harry stamped a heel onto his foot in turn.

They fought. They muscled. And, Draco realised in a moment of breathless incredulity, he was laughing. Harry was laughing. It was… wonderful.

"Let go of it, you sodding –"

"I had it _first_ –"

"- everything in this kitchen is _mine_ –"

"- stuck up prat!"

And they fell.

Draco wasn't sure who tripped whom. Maybe both. Maybe neither. All he knew was that one moment he was snatching the spatula from Harry's hand and the next they were toppling over. He heard himself yelp. Harry cried with surprise that bubbled into laughter. There was a flurry of flour, the bag in Harry's hand flying loose, and in the snowfall that followed, Draco crashed into the ground.

He grunted. Then grunted again when Harry landed on top of him. Despite it all, Draco couldn't have stopped laughing had he wanted to.

Sprawled on his back beneath Harry's similarly sprawled weight, he laughed. Panting – who knew tussles were so _exhausting_? – and laughing so hard his belly hurt. Harry's shaking bespoke a similar unshakeable impediment.

"You bloody idiot!" Draco managed, head dropping back onto the floor and eyes turning to the ceiling.

" _I'm_ the idiot?" Harry panted in reply. "You started it."

"You got flour everywhere."

"And whose fault would that be?"

"Yours! It's _yours_!"

Draco closed his eyes briefly as his struggled for breath between laughs. Then he opened them, glanced briefly at the ceiling once more and the magically enhanced lights directly overhead, before drawing his gaze towards Harry.

Harry was peering up at him in turn. He was even then managing to get a hold upon his amusement, laughter dying into a smile that faded in wideness but not sincerity. Harry pushed himself up just slightly on Draco's chest, elbows uncomfortably pointy but wonderful for the fact that Harry was lying on _top_ of him.

"You're an idiot," Draco found himself murmuring. "A good enough baker, but an idiot. I don't know why I even like you."

Harry's smile faded. Fully faded this time, and Draco could have kicked himself for his words. Why had he said that? The confession? The ridicule before the confession? Draco had always prided himself on his way with words but it had been a fumble like the fool he claimed Harry to be.

With a struggle – because, regardless of Draco's idiocy, Harry hadn't yet climbed off him – Draco propped himself up on his elbows. His laughter had dissipated in a heartbeat, and he was left to stare at Harry's wide, intent eyes, the strangely solemn cast to his features. His mouth opened to speak – to retract, to apologise, even, but then –

"I like you too."

Draco hadn't expected the kiss. The kiss was, in fact, the last thing he had been expecting. But that was what it was, and as Harry lurched towards him, captured his head in both hands, and dragged their faces together, Draco had no complaint. He had no… nothing, really. His mind short-circuited like the faulty pantry light bulb that even magic wasn't able to fix.

Harry was kissing him.

He was kissing him. Intentionally. Sincerely.

He was…

Draco would have been a fool to think Harry didn't like him at least a little. There had been the dinner. The conversation. The games. The fact that Harry chose to accept his offer of employment despite knowing who Draco was. He'd even thought to hope that it might be the same kind of liking that Draco felt, especially after his brief mention of the Oliver Haighs mystery man with the fiancée, the almost wistful longing he'd seen as he'd spoken..

But this… Draco hadn't expected the kiss.

It ended too quickly. Far too quickly for him to respond properly, or even grab at Harry to hold him _right there_ where he should have been. The sweetness of lips pressed against his own, the warmth of breath, the clasp of Harry's fingers around his head – it was all so overwhelming, so overpowering, that Draco didn't know what to do with himself. In his kitchen, amongst the scents of freshly baked pastries and the radiating heat of ovens, Harry curled around him and _kissing_ him was too perfect to be reality.

All Draco could think was that he'd somehow been just a little right in his speculations about the dinner and what it could mean. Thank Merlin he was right.

It ended when Harry drew backwards, far too quickly when he withdrew. He paused for a second to peer at what Draco could only assume was his own stupefied expression, before scrambling backwards so fast he might have been charmed to do so. He was on his haunches two feet away in a second.

"Sorry," Harry all but mumbled. His face crinkled slightly, eyes briefly closing as though in reprimand as a hand rose to scuff at the back of his head. "I'm sorry, I –"

"Harry."

"I shouldn't have done that. Sorry."

"Harry."

"If it makes things awkward, I'm really sorry. I didn't intend to –"

"Harry, shut the fuck up."

Harry shut the fuck up. Giving him his due, it would be a little hard not to when Draco all but threw himself towards him to grab him in a hold in return, to smother him in kisses that stole his breath.

Harry shut the fuck up very well indeed.

There was a brief suspension in time. Draco lost himself for that moment, in Harry's lips, in the feeling of Harry's hand sliding around his waist as his own clasped in return. The spatula clattered to the ground behind him, forgotten. The mess of flour, the spread of half-stirred bowls and cooling cakes, was disregarded. Nothing, it felt, was more important than lips and breath and the tongue that curled around Draco's own as he opened his mouth and met Harry's.

Words were hardly a possibility but Draco still somehow managed. "You – you like –"

"You actually like me?" Harry breathed.

"That's what I was going to ask."

"Of course I do, you nitwit." Harry momentarily paused their fervent passion, the brush of his lips not quite removed from Draco's to speak. "Wasn't that obvious when I stuck around for so long?"

Draco all but groaned. His hands tightened on Harry's apron. His eyes closed, but only briefly, because he couldn't miss the sight of Harry's face, his spreading smile, his beautiful eyes so close Draco thought he could almost make out the entire spread of multihued greens and pick out each individual colour.

"You're sticking around?" Draco couldn't help but ask. His words sounded desperate to his own ears. Pathetically desperate. Hungry, even.

Harry nodded. Shortly, decisively, and with his smile widening further, he nodded, and that was enough for Draco. The crack of Apparition resounded throughout the room, the kitchen left behind in shambles. For once, Draco didn't care for the mess he'd made. His mind was far more occupied with something vastly more wondrous.

* * *

Draco almost fell when he landed. He staggered, briefly tottered – and then he really was falling, because Harry's hold upon his arm had remained fast throughout their Apparition and he all but dragged him down.

They stumbled as one into the wall, and Draco hardly heeded the almost painful jarring against his shoulder.

Harry didn't release his hold. If anything, it tightened as he slumped into the wall himself. And then it wasn't just a hold, but reaching, pulling, dragging closer. Or maybe that was Draco reaching, grasping, pulling _himself_ towards _Harry_. In the darkness of his apartment – a darkness barely alleviated by the constant _Lumos_ hanging in his living room – Draco's hands grasped the collar of Harry's shirt, the fingers of his other hand curling around the back of his neck, and in short order…

Their kiss was breathless. It was hot, and ragged, and rich with the press of warm lips and wet tongue, with the sweetness of sugar made even sweeter in the moment. Draco drank Harry in as he pressed himself against him, crowding him against the wall. Or maybe that was Harry dragging him closer again, hands grasping for his waist, around his back, clever fingers that Draco so admired in the kitchen crafting a different kind of wonder.

Draco melted into it. The warmth of fingers – his own, Harry's – the firm pressed lips – once, twice, locking without release. Draco's grasp tightened on Harry's neck, his shirt, pressed himself closer than the coil of Harry's arms around him demanded. The press of Harry's body against his own was – it was –

Harry pulled away in a gasp, jerking his head from Draco's. "What the fuck?"

For a heartbeat, Draco froze. For that barest of seconds, the possibilities spread before him – that they were kissing and they shouldn't be, that he bloody _liked_ Harry Potter and he _definitely_ shouldn't, that they were colleagues, ex-rivals, comrades in escaping the Wizarding world that neither truly wanted to be rid of, and that they _couldn't_ become something more. That it wouldn't work to become more.

A big part of Draco objected to that notion, and it was that objection which had him tightening his grasp upon Harry's flour-stained shirt. "What are you -?"

"You've charmed your apartment to undress anyone who steps through the doorway?"

Another heartbeat, another second, and then every misgiving abruptly risen in Draco's mind evaporated. It was only then that he realised he'd absently shrugged out of his coat, offering it to the magic he had indeed charmed to disrobe him of at least his outer layers like an attentive butler offering its usual service. He hadn't anticipated it would do the same to Harry.

Draco couldn't quite see Harry's expression through the semi-darkness, but he found himself laughing nonetheless. He knew there would be surprise and incredulity, and he knew too what such would look like; the rising of eyebrows, the widening of eyes, the momentary silent opening of mouth just short of indignant. That Draco knew _exactly_ what it would look like flooded a strange warmth into his gut that was entirely aside from the heat of arousal.

Leaning into Harry, pressing his body along the length of him as he allowed his magic to shrug him out of his coat, Draco raised a hand to Harry's chin. With more ease, more comfort and surety and _rightness_ than he could have ever anticipated, he drew him into a slower, deeper kiss. The thrill of Harry's immediate response sent tingles to every fingertip. "Do you have a problem with that?" Draco murmured into Harry's mouth.

"With being undressed by your magic?" Harry replied, the motion of his lips brushing Draco's own. "Or the fact that you disrobe everybody that steps into your flat?"

Draco couldn't help but chuckle. How unprecedented; he'd laughed more that week than he felt he had in the past decade. "Are you jealous?"

"What?"

"Is that what it is? You're jealous that my magic would –"

"Of course I'm bloody jealous," Harry said, drawing his head back slightly. Not far, though; the wall behind him made certain of that. "Who wouldn't be?"

There was no embarrassment in his voice. No reluctance to admit the truth of his feelings. Harry, it seemed, was of the mindset that when a decision was made there was no turning back. He'd committed himself, it would seem. He was entirely comfortable with that decision, too. It was almost as if…

How long had he felt such a way? Surely not long, or Draco would have noticed. Surely not as long as Draco had been wanting _Harry_ without admitting it to himself. Draco was impeccably honest with his own desires, up to the point when he realised he couldn't have what he wanted. But if Harry wanted… if he _had_ wanted…

The warmth in Draco's belly seemed to merge into something that drew his breath short. He doubted he would have been able to stop himself from chasing the brief retreat of Harry's head, from kissing him deeply and breathing him in, if he'd wanted to. He was, after all, honest with his desires.

"That's irrelevant," Draco breathed into Harry's mouth when he could spare a second to draw away. Only slightly. Always only slightly. "That jealousy is irrelevant."

"Because -?" Harry murmured distractedly.

"Because no one else will come in here but you, you idiot."

Harry blinked. Despite the darkness, Draco could have sworn he saw his eyes widen even further, that he saw the green of his eyes deepen with something like hunger. "Fucking hell."

"What?"

"That stupidly and unbelievably hot."

Draco couldn't help but laugh.

The 'Disrobing Charm' as Harry had dubbed it, was convenient for Draco's purposes, and he was only too relieved that he'd forced it to a stop at outer garments. When he could managed – when they could both mange – to pause for long enough, leaving their magically captured aprons at the door and stumbling down the short length of the hallway, it was to stumble again as their shoes untied themselves.

Although, maybe the stumbling wasn't so much a product of the magic. Draco grasped Harry's arm, capturing his wrist and holding fast, just as he latched onto the front of his shirt and dragged him close. At the same time, Harry all but clung to Draco, crashing them briefly into the wall of the living room to smother Draco's lips with a kiss, to press another onto hi jaw, then his throat. It was enough to make Draco moan as he had _certainly_ not anticipated.

How long had it been since he'd had sex? Since he'd even kissed anyone? Draco couldn't recall, but maybe that was why he felt so disoriented. That – or because it was Harry. Harry had always gotten under his skin. This time it was just by a different route.

The bedroom was shrouded in the same semi-darkness as the hallway, the suspended _Lumos_ abandoned as they passed from the living room. Draco didn't care. He barely needed to see as they all but collapsed onto the bed in a tangle of limbs and fingers, of kisses and gasping breath. Draco didn't need to see because he felt the softness of warm skin as his hands slipped beneath Harry's shirt, smelt the scent of him that was sweeter and more intoxicating than the finest pastry, heard him utter a delectable mouth when Draco pressed himself down on top of him and latched his lips to his neck. Harry's arms curling around him once more tightened almost painfully, but Draco didn't care. Or he cared, but it was sincerely wonderful.

Heady. Messy. A touch manic. It was all so wholly Harry that Draco almost tasted him for the upwelling of longing the rose within him. He had to stop. He had to stop just briefly before he exploded.

"Harry," Draco gasped, for a heartbeat forced to pause and rest his forehead against Harry's. Their intermingled breaths flooded his lungs with each inhalation. "Harry, I –"

"Don't stop," Harry said, and it almost sounded like an order.

"Fucking hell, I'm not going to stop," Draco all but growled. "Not unless you –"

"Draco –"

"Unless you'd want to –"

"Draco, of all the times to be bloody chivalrous." Harry grasped the back of his head and dragged into another kiss as wet and sticky and sweetly, perfectly messy as those before. It was harder to draw away this time, and maybe that was why Draco blurted out as crudely as he did.

"I want to fuck you."

He heard Harry's breath catch. It stuttered. It huffed with his sigh-laugh that was nothing if not the finest of music to Draco's ears. Even better still, given that, not even a moment to retract his words, Harry had loosened his arms enough to raise them to lock around Draco's neck even tighter than before. "Hell yes."

If Draco moaned at such simple words, only Harry was there to hear, and that didn't really matter. Harry's moan met his own.

Magic couldn't have disrobed faster, and yet even for their speed, Draco's gaze darted across every inch of exposed skin draped in shadows. Harry _was_ thinner than he'd been in the pictures after the war, and Draco recalled – stupidly – almost regretting that fact weeks before. Regret didn't even exist in his mind as his hands found Harry's hips, as his fingers grazed up his chest and around his back to slip down his spine. Broad shoulders perhaps not so broad as they had been were utterly delicious as Draco dropped his mouth to them, sucking and biting and kissing his way up Harry's collarbones. It was wondrous, perfect, and made only more so by the soft then hard, the gentle then fierce touches that Harry trailed across his own body.

And the eyes. Draco might not have been able to see particularly well through the darkness, but when his gaze caught Harry's, every nerve ending within him seemed to thrum with the rightness of it all.

Just as it did when Harry breathed and muttered into his lips. Words like "Draco" sounded so unutterably _good_ , and "Come _on_ , already" was purely enchanting. Just as was did when Harry rolled himself over, when Draco reached for his nightstand to lather his fingers from the blessedly-waiting tube of stashed lube and grazed those fingers down the back of Harry's thighs. Just as it so heartily did when Harry groaned beneath each touch of his fingers as Draco pried him open.

But nothing was quite so right as when, with a slow thrust of his hips, Draco eased his way inside of him.

Harry gasped. Draco felt it throughout the entirety of his body, from his fingers that grasped Harry's hips to the heat of his hardness pressed inside of him. Draco almost couldn't breathe for that rightness. The sound of heavy breathing, the sight of Harry's bare shoulders made paler in the darkness, was more glorious than any classical symphony, than any pastry compiled to perfection. Draco couldn't help but drape himself atop of Harry, couldn't help but wrap his arms around him – around his chest, his waist, clutching in something barely short of desperation – just to feel each heavy exhalation.

"Fuck, you feel good," he gasped into Harry's nape.

"I – Draco, you –"

He was far from articulate. Draco could have teased Harry for that. He'd just never felt less like teasing in his life.

With a rock of his hips, with the slow undulations that grew faster, stronger, more desperate, Draco chased the sweetness that welled within him. The heat that flooded his groin throbbed with each thrust, resounded with each of Harry's gasps – or were they his own? He couldn't tell. It didn't matter, because they were one and the same.

Draco's hand cupped instinctively around Harry's arousal, curling around Harry's own hand that worked himself, and it was with barely a coherent thought that he drew him to release. Hot – so hot – and aching and _wanting_ ; the pounding of hips and the utter rightness and the longing that he hadn't even realised.

Dammit, but they should have just gotten over their rivalry and fucked in school. How life would have been so much easier. So much _better_.

Climax peaked, cresting and releasing, in an outburst of wordless cries. Draco felt every muscle tense, every inch of him straining, as tide after rolling tide of pleasure buffeted him. His hand worked by instinct, moving alongside Harry's, and he was blessedly grateful for that fact when his pleasure only redoubled with Harry's ragged cry of blissful release.

Draco sagged. He clung to Harry, arms drawn only more tightly around him, and it was all he could do to keep himself collapsing entirely upon him. Sweat-slick skin pressing against his chest had never felt so good; Draco had always been one for cleanliness, even in sex as far as such could be attained, but this… he couldn't find it in himself to care. The scent of Harry's nape, as sweetly sweaty as the rest of him, was as far from aversive as could be.

Harry panted heavily. Draco felt him shaking beneath him, could understand that feeling for he felt it himself, and drew away just slightly. Not far, however. He couldn't quite withdraw just yet. That Harry following him, seating himself back onto Draco despite Draco's flagging arousal, was a whole new bout of sweetness in itself. Warm and wet and sticky and… and…

And Draco had no difficulty allowing for such moments of dirtiness. Especially not when Harry dragged a hand back behind him, fingers reaching to grasp Draco's buttocks as though to hold him closer. Even better for the turn of his head, the twist of his body, and the awkward yet entirely wonderful smatter of kisses he managed to press against Draco's lips.

"Fuck, you're good," he almost hissed.

"Mm," Draco hummed in reply. Words didn't quite seem able to articulate his thoughts, but he hoped his hands spoke for him. Whether against his will or entirely by it, Draco's arms locked around Harry's waist to hold him against him. Never letting go seemed like an entirely reasonable desire at that moment.

"We should have done that sooner," Harry continued against his lips.

"Mm."

"What?"

"What what?"

Harry dropped a kiss once more, brief and almost chaste, and Draco couldn't help but chase the barest withdrawal as he pulled slightly away. "That's all you've got to say?" Harry murmured.

"You're right," Draco replied.

"You're admitting I'm –?"

"We definitely should have done this sooner. Try weeks ago, maybe."

Harry smiled. Draco felt it. He saw it. He tasted it as Harry dropped another kiss, long and slow and deepening with every second. "Try years."

Draco chuckled. Well, at least he wasn't alone in his sentiment. "Then maybe we should –"

"Make up for lost time?"

"Definitely."

The darkness was warm and smothering and entirely private, but even if it hadn't been, Draco wouldn't have cared. He'd found the sweetest of flavours that he hadn't even realised he'd been searching for.


	7. Chapter 7 - Digestif

**Chapter 7: Digestif**

 _~ Usually partaken away from the primary site of dining, this post-meal beverage is usually drier or starker, than the consumed aperitif. Nonetheless, this digestive assistance is oftentimes touched by an underlying sweetness to assist with the closing of the meal~_

* * *

Sunday morning was Draco's day of rest. It was the only day of the week that his pâtisserie was closed, his wand muting itself into silence rather than its usual alarm. For that one day a week, Draco rose with the sun, and though it wasn't quite as aromatically tasteful as waking to the scent of baking bread, it certainly had its appeal.

Rays of light filtered around the edges of the curtained window. The warmth of thick blankets, the comfort of an even thicker mattress, was encouragement enough to remain with eyes closed and lazing disregard for the entirety of the day. Every inch of Draco's body felt satisfied, down to the flood of rich scents into his lungs with each breath.

Smells. Something other than that of baking bread. Something salty and… buttery?

Draco blinked his eyes open and immediately rolled his head to the side. He blinked again and, with a start, propped himself up onto his elbows. Another glance around his room, across the expanse of his bed, and he straightened further. But for himself, his bedroom was empty. Harry was nowhere to be seen.

The smells filtering into the room snatched at his attention once more with a renewed whiff. The momentary stuttering of Draco's heart in something that wasn't panic but felt almost like it soothed into relief. Something was cooking in his house, and it wasn't Draco's own magic. Given that entry was forbidden to absolutely everyone else, it could only truly be one person.

Draco rose from the comfortable cocoon of his bed. Pausing only to drag on a pair of slacks, he padded to the doorway and, easing the half-closed door more fully open, squinted into the light beyond.

Harry, it would seem, had opened up the flat to the glory of the morning. It was an almost surreal feeling for Draco. Living alone for years as he had been, wandering into a living room that wasn't quite how he'd left it the night before was… strange. Almost disconcerting.

Irrelevant, however, when Draco turned to his simple kitchen and beheld the true glory morning presented to him.

Darkness had detracted from the wonder, but in the light Draco saw every inch of what had otherwise been hidden from him. Harry, wearing only his own slacks, stood at the stovetop with his bare back towards Draco. The lines of his shoulder blades, the tapering of his waist and the dimples at his lower back, were like the spread of a buffet had Draco been a starving man. The satisfying sufficiency of previous night hardly seemed enough for the sight of him.

Harry's mussed hair was even more so than it had been, and Draco didn't care. The kitchen was a little messy – a bowl left out, a chopping board with a handful of shallots abandoned, a whisk dripping with runny egg – but he didn't care for the moment about that, either. He couldn't find an inkling of protest within himself when Harry, with a muted clatter of metal upon granite bench tops, briefly turned from his saucepan to retrieve a pair of plates from an overhead cupboard. Draco would quite happily watch the play of muscles that tensed and then eased with the simple reaching motion for the rest of the morning.

He was stepping into the kitchen with barely a thought, crossing to where Harry stood without announcing himself. The barest flicker of uncertainty, that maybe sex and passion hadn't changed all that much between then, was disregarded as Draco stepped up behind Harry and wrapped his arms around his waist, pressing himself to the warm skin of his back. It wasn't common for him – hell, Draco hadn't had a lover in years – but just as had happened the night before it felt right.

Harry started slightly, not in shock but as though unsuspecting. A small sound of surprise or perhaps welcome was all he uttered before he was twisting in Draco's grasp to face him. His own hands settled upon Draco's hips and almost before he'd fully turned he was leaning forwards to meet Draco's lips with a brief, sweet kiss.

Draco drew away. He had to, because he couldn't help but stare at Harry. He stared for a long moment and Harry didn't speak. Maybe he'd expected Draco's surprise, or maybe he just didn't have anything to say. Maybe, unexpectedly, he was happy with the silence.

Not that it lasted long. "You're wearing glasses," Draco found himself saying.

Harry smiled. His eyes softened behind the lenses that rested atop his nose as an eyebrow rose questioningly. "Is that a bad thing?"

Raising a hand, Draco flicked aside a curl of Harry's fringe. Then he did so again, simply to run a finger across his forehead. Then his fingers grazed through Harry's hair because it felt _so good_ and he would never have thought it but the mess was actually appealing.

And the glasses. Draco hadn't realised how much he'd missed them until Harry wore them once more.

"They're different to those you wore in school," he said, briefly touching the frames.

Harry shrugged. "The old ones were old."

"They're not even round."

"Do they have to be?"

Another graze of fingers through Harry's hair – his wonderfully, unexpectedly soft hair – and Draco leaned forwards to kiss him once more. "No," he murmured. "They always were appalling." He smiled as Harry chuckled against his mouth. "Why _are_ you wearing them?"

"Is that a bad thing too?" Harry asked, an eyebrow rising.

"No," Draco said. _Definitely not_. "I only wonder why."

Harry hummed into his lips. "They just get fogged up easily when I'm cooking. And God help me if flour gets on the lenses; it can be a bugger to get off."

"But you're cooking now," Draco pointed out. "At an ungodly hour of the morning."

"It's eight o'clock in the morning, Draco."

"On a Sunday."

"That's still not that early."

"Yes it is. It's a _Sunday_."

"Repeating that fact isn't helping your argument any," Harry said. He stepped backwards from where they were pressed chest to chest, if only slightly. "Hungry?"

Draco wasn't particularly. Or he was, but the necessity of distance required to sit down and dine wasn't something he felt inclined to pursue. But Harry had kissed him, had held him just as Draco had wrapped himself around him first, so the momentary concern had faded. Besides, Draco didn't want to cling. What is Harry didn't want that?

His momentary return of worry evaporated again, however, when they crossed to the dining table. Harry, without comment or ceremony, proceeded to pull the only other chair besides Draco's around the table to sit at his side rather than accept the distance of traditional seating placements. It was so casual, so expected, even, that Draco could only smile.

Or smile wider. He'd hardly realised that a smile had been upon his lips since he'd stepped into the kitchen at all.

The omelette, for such was what it was, appeared nothing if not divine. With a toss of vegetable for a pizza-like array of colours, the visual was glorious, to say nothing of the _smell_. Had Draco not had a very distracting new lover at his side, he likely would have scarcely been able to suppress the urge to fall upon it immediately.

"You cook," he stated, almost as a question.

Harry shrugged a shoulder – a bare, beautifully smooth shoulder that Draco would have been more than happy to explore with his mouth once more – and nodded. "What gave me away?"

"That's something of an unexpected skill."

"It's unexpected for a baker to be able to cook?"

Draco raised his fork to gesture to himself. "For me? Yes. I use magic."

Harry grinned. "I could have guessed that."

"You could?"

"After a day with no magic allowed, it's kind of a relief to get home and be able to use it as much as you'd like, right?"

The omelette was beckoning him, and Draco wasn't ashamed in the slightest to acknowledge that he was practically salivating. Yet he lowered his fork curiously, frowning slightly as he stared at Harry. "Then why don't you?"

"Hm?" Harry paused with his own fork in his mouth. He swallowed with a questioning tilt of his head. "Why do I cook manually, do you mean?"

"Yes."

"Hm…" Harry's gaze dropped momentarily to his plate. "Habit, I guess? I've cooked for years. Back when I still lived with my relatives –"

"Your relatives?" Draco frowned. It didn't take him much to stretch his brain. "You mean your aunt and uncle? Back when you were seventeen?"

"Before that actually." Harry speared another forkful of omelette. "My aunt had me cooking the family meals since I was five."

Draco stared. His omelette with all of its tantalising tastes sat all but forgotten. "She made you help her cook since you were five."

"Yeah," Harry said with a nod. He took a bite with another shrug. "By myself when I proved I knew what I was doing and wouldn't burn the house down with… Draco, what's wrong?"

 _What's wrong?_ Draco's hand squeezed his fork was so tightly that the metal all but cut into his fingers. _What's wrong, he says. As if he doesn't even realise what's the problem is. As if making a five year old cook the whole family's bloody meals isn't… as if it isn't…_ "There is so much wrong with that situation that I don't even know where to begin," Draco said flatly.

Harry eyebrow rose curiously. "You're making a bigger deal out of this than needs to be made."

"What?" Draco heard the sharpness in his own voice but he didn't care. It wasn't for Harry anyway, not directed to him. His indignation didn't even fade when Harry smiled crookedly and reached across the table with his free hand. "It's very sweet of you to be so defensive, Draco –"

"I'm not _sweet_."

"- but it's unnecessary," Harry continued over him. "Besides, I actually like cooking. I guess you could say it inspired me to be a baker, so… I guess it all worked out, right?"

It was wrong. So wrong, and Harry didn't seem to realise that. Draco had questions he wanted to ask, questions that were nearly exclamations of frustration, and only added to those that had been resting with him for days. Harry was a riddle, and wonders – of how he'd died, of an inspiring man in a chocolate shop, of a childhood with relatives that had him _cooking_ for them like a house elf – were just a handful of them. The urge to ask, to all but demand answers, was nearly irrepressible.

Frowning down at his omelette, Draco fought to withhold a hiss, smothering his rising indignation. It would be bad enough had Harry been treated like a house elf when if he and Draco were only friends – or employer and employee, or colleagues, or… or whatever they'd been. But after last night, after what they'd become…

The offence was personal, because Draco realised abruptly that Harry was _his_ as much as he'd become Harry's.

That realisation drew him to a halt. His brewing anger momentarily quelled and he raised his gaze to meet Harry's slightly exasperated expression. "There's a story there," he said lowly, "and I want to hear it."

"Sob stories should be reserved for nights in a drunken stupor, I think," Harry said. He shook his head chidingly. "Seriously, Draco, it's not that bad. And I'm sure you've had worse that you've –"

Draco was on his feet and stepping over the already minimal distance between them. He slid his hands around Harry's face, fingers curling on either side of his jaw, and tipped his head up to face him. "Don't do that," he ordered. "You'll tell me."

"Bossy prat," Harry muttered, and though his hands rose to grasp Draco's wrists he didn't pull himself away from him.

Draco took a deep breath and sighed it out slowly. "Please," he said. "I want to know. All of it."

Whether Harry understood the full weight of Draco's words, he couldn't be sure. Maybe he did. Maybe he saw through Draco as easily as Draco saw through his own words – to the depth, the feeling, the want and the desperate hunger that had sparked alight within him the night before. A hunger that, when Draco truly considered it, had been smouldering within him for years. In a different form, perhaps, but there nonetheless.

Or maybe Harry didn't see anything at all. Maybe, just maybe, he simply wanted Draco as much as Draco found himself wanting in turn. There was certainly desire in his grasp when he reached for Draco and locked his hands around his neck, dragging him down towards him.

Their kiss was as deeply, slowly luxurious as those of the previous night had been deeply, frantically impassioned. The taste of omelette touched Harry's tongue, and it was sweeter than Draco had expected. A little salty, but far sweeter.

Draco's own breakfast lay untouched for some time. There were more important things in his hands, after all. Far more important occupations for his morning. Draco realised as he lost himself in Harry once more that awakening to the smell of baking bread had become a much-loved commonality for Draco. For years he'd considered nothing could possibly surpass it.

That morning, he readily admitted he had been absolutely wrong.

* * *

The pâtisserie was quiet at two o'clock on a Monday afternoon. At the handover between Eloise, George and Wilson, that quiet couldn't have fallen at a better hour. The lunchtime rush had dwindled, the last of the very late breakfast attendants departed with coffee and pastry, and the melodious lilt of Draco's particular choice of classical music for that day was a lulling background tune that only emphasised the sleekly refined lines of the pâtisserie itself.

It was the perfect time, Draco had decided, to reveal certain realities to his workers.

"I won't tell Margaret about us," he'd discussed with Harry that morning. "I don't want to give the woman a heart attack or anything."

"I think you're undermining Margaret's resilience if that's your reasoning," Harry replied, smiling slightly around his cup of coffee. That he had coffee at all was only because Draco was forced to store it for his pâtisserie a floor beneath them. Draco himself had always been less than forgiving of the brew, even if he did sell it in his shop.

Surprisingly, however, it didn't irk him quite as much as it once might have. On Monday morning, he found it barely irked at all.

"She's, what, seventy?" Draco said with a sip of his own tea before placing it down upon the dining table.

"Sixty-two, actually," Harry replied with a smirk.

"She looks older."

"No she doesn't. How many sixty-two year olds have you seen?"

"I'm telling you, she looks older."

"She's Muggle. They age faster, apparently."

"That doesn't excuse for – no, stop." Draco held up a hand, briefly closing his eyes. "We're getting distracted."

Harry's damned smile, the one that Draco could now readily admit to all but melting before, spread around the rim of his mug once more. "You love it."

"Arguing?"

"Yes. I've noticed."

"Of course I do," Draco sniffed. "And so do you."

"Of course," Harry echoed, almost to the exact tone. "Why else do you think I picked so many fights with you in school?"

For a moment, Draco met Harry's eyes across the table. He found himself smiling, a wide spreading of his smile that almost ached for how unfamiliar it was. Draco didn't think he'd been happier in his entire life. What a wondrous feeling…

It took a concerted effort – and a sight more time committed to staring – before Draco could drag himself back on track. "Regardless, we're not telling Margret. The kids will be enough."

"Eloise is nearly twenty-four," Harry pointed out.

"She's still a child," Draco countered.

"She's two years younger than you."

"Exactly. A child."

"Wilson's twenty-three –"

"And George is practically a baby."

"He's _twenty-one_."

"Are you attempting to pick another argument with me?" Draco asked.

Harry quirked an eyebrow. With deliberate slowness, he dropped an elbow to the table top and his chin to his upraised hand. The casual spread of his fingers curling before his lips did nothing to hide his grin. "It won't be an argument if you just concede that I'm right."

"Never," Draco said immediately.

"Tosser."

" _I'm_ the one who's always –"

"You've so much confidence in your justification…"

"Potter –"

"Why, you'd even think that –"

Draco was on his feet and skirting the table in an instant. Their 'discussion' ceased after that, and it was _entirely_ Harry's fault. What followed was not quite an argument, however. Draco had most recently discovered that there were far more interesting exchanges they could engage in with their mouths.

Which was how they found themselves standing before the three kids at two o'clock in the afternoon. The Waterbury wall clock ticked each passing second with almost ominous hollowness.

"There is a subject that has recently arisen that requires discussion," Draco said into the relative quietness.

Wilson blinked emotionlessly. Eloise frowned. But George – the 'baby' George – erupted in a heartbeat. "Am I fired? Is that it? Am I going to be fired, Dray?"

"What?" Draco snapped his gaze towards him. "What in God's name are you –?"

"For whatever I've done, I'm sorry," George said in a rush. His wide eyes darted towards Harry, to Eloise and Wilson, then drew back to Draco. He appeared almost frantic. "I know I suck at baking, mostly, and that I talk a lot, and that sometimes you find me annoying, Dray –"

"Sometimes?" Draco arched an eyebrow.

"- but I'll do better." George didn't even seem to hear him. "I swear I will. I love this job, Dray, I truly do, and it's not just because you let me take a pastry or two home every day though that's very kind of you, or because the pay's great, 'cause it is, but –"

"George, calm down," Harry said, taking half a step forwards. Not far, however. Not far from Draco's side, which Draco was satisfied for. He didn't much want to cross the room to stand before George as he would _have_ to if Harry went himself. "You're not fired. I swear."

"Yet," Draco couldn't help but add.

"Draco," Harry sighed.

Draco smiled. He couldn't help himself. The sigh was one of exasperation but also a little resignation. It bespoke of a long history of acquaintance and a future of further companionship. Draco loved it, and it was the simple joy of the fact that had him still smiling as he turned back to his employees. "George, that wasn't what I was referring to. What I _meant_ was that Harry and I have an announcement of sorts."

George fell into silence with a relieved slump of his shoulders. Eloise's frown grew curious. Wilson only blinked once more – until he spoke. "Is it that you're both wizards?"

The silence that followed was deafening.

Draco stared at Wilson. He noted detachedly that Harry turned slowly towards him as well, and Eloise, and George, but he barely heeded them. Wilson was as quietly subdued as ever, almost disinterested, but his gaze drew knowingly between Draco and Harry nonetheless.

"What…?" Harry began before trailing off.

"Wilson, have you gone off your rocker?" George asked. Clearly he'd recovered enough for condescension.

Wilson ignored him. "You've been pretty good at hiding it most of the time, but to someone who knows what to look for it's pretty obvious."

Draco had lost his verbal capacities, couldn't even think of where to look for it, yet somehow he found himself speaking nonetheless. "How did you know that?"

"What?" Eloise said.

" _What?_ " George all but yelped.

Wilson shrugged. "I'm a squib. I thought you knew that.

"You're a – a _what?_ " Eloise asked.

"What the hell is going on?" George said. His eyes were so wide Draco wouldn't have been surprised had they popped from his head.

But he barely noticed that, either. Staring at Wilson, he shook his head slowly. "I didn't know."

Wilson blinked again, a touch of surprise to his otherwise blank expression. "Really?"

Draco shook his head sharply. "Not at all. I was under the impression Merrington was removed from the Wizarding world."

"I heard it was full of all Muggles," Harry added with a nod. "Thus the basis of its appeal.

"What the -?" Eloise stuttered. "What is a Muggle? What -?"

"I'm so confused," George said, raising a hand to scrub at his forehead. "What are we talking about? Is this a joke?"

Wilson ignored them again, for which Draco was grateful. He wanted answers. "It is, for the most part. Except for squibs. And you two, I suppose. Wizards don't live here, really. It's too removed from the Wizarding world, like you said."

"Wait, so, _actual wizards_ ," George said slowly. Eloise seemed to have lost her tongue entirely.

Draco stared at Wilson for a long moment. Then, slowly, he turned to share a glance with Harry. A silent conversation passed between them, and somewhere inside of Draco that wasn't floored by Wilson's revelation was thrilled for the fact that they could speak without speaking so easily.

 _This is unexpected._

 _What do we do?_

 _Do we have to do anything?_

 _I suppose not, but it still changes things_.

And it would. Draco and Harry's own revelation hadn't been quite as Wilson had outed them for, but everything would change nonetheless. Abruptly, the afternoon and all those henceforth became flooded with a riot of possibilities that Draco had no idea what to do with.

He disliked when things went out of his control. He disliked them sincerely. It was likely that as much as anything that found him with the urge to reply at all. _Take the pegasus reigns into your own hands_ , his mother had once told him.

Draco turned back to Wilson – to him most specifically, because Wilson had abruptly become significantly more important, the perceptive little shit. "As a matter of fact, that wasn't what I was referring to," he said.

"So… you're not wizards?" George asked slowly.

Draco ignored him. Taking half a step closer to Harry's side, he turned and met Harry's gaze once more. "Harry and I have decided to initiate a relationship. We considered it was best that you know."

Another bout of silence. Another hollowness broken only by the music and the ticking of the clock. That, and Harry's murmured, "Did you have to make it sound so clinical?"

Then it snapped.

"What?" Eloise said.

" _What?_ " George all but shouted.

Wilson sighed. "About time. You've been practically eye-fucking for weeks.

The eruption that followed wasn't unexpected, even if Wilson's demonstration of perceptiveness once more certainly was. Draco stood at Harry's side throughout the chorus of questions from Eloise and George, the congratulations, even, and he endured.

The discussion had taken an unexpected turn, perhaps, and the peppering of those questions was far from appreciated, but Draco felt nothing short of satisfaction for the announcement. Enough to allow Harry to link hands with him in a way that Draco had _never_ held hands before as they weathered what was primarily George's verbal assault.

With Harry's hand warm in his own, Draco realised hadn't quite known what he'd been missing out on.

* * *

"Well, that didn't go quite as planned."

"Did we plan it? Did we actually plan anything at all other than that you were going to tell them?"

"That, Harry, is a plan unto itself."

Sitting in the shopfront, sipping his tea as always and listening to Wilson cleaning as he always did, it was familiar. The pâtisserie smelled the same, looked the same, sounded the same, with Chopin adding his pianist utterances to the calming afternoon air. The same – and yet entirely different.

Because Draco sat at his usual table, and across from him sat Harry.

After Eloise and George had been calmed – and after they'd both been thoroughly convinced that it wasn't some wild prank for both revelations – the afternoon had smoothed remarkably easily. Eloise had been wide-eyed in wonder for the magic that Harry had shown her, and George seemed to have short-circuited somewhere along his way to understanding the changed nature of Draco and Harry's relationship.

But it had smoothed.

Draco ideally wouldn't have had any of the kids know he was a wizard, but in many ways it made everything easier. Much easier, especially to explain the wealth of baked goods from Saturday night that had only been briefly hidden by magic that morning.

It was good. Fine. No, it was more than fine. _Excellent_ was a better word to describe how Draco felt, and not just because of the revelation to the kids. It wasn't just because the morning had passed with surprising efficiency and maximum fluidity. Not because magic somehow felt suddenly more allowed, nor because he'd tried some of Harry's baklava from Saturday night and it had been about the most delicious thing he'd ever eaten. It wasn't even because Wilson had stepped forth with surprising supportiveness to ease the transition for the two ignorant Muggles.

It was, Draco realised, mostly because Harry sat across from him. Draco was… happy.

Harry was even then simply sitting, hand draping over his own teacup of actual tea this time, and shaking his head slightly as he watched Wilson across the room. The smile that played on his lips looked like it might even be more delicious than his baklava. "It could have certainly gone worse, I suppose."

"It could have," Draco said.

"I mean, its not like we'll be able to use magic in broad daylight or anything –"

"Not in Merrington," Draco agreed, and Harry nodded his understanding. To use magic openly in Merrington would just feel… wrong.

"Right. And it's not like it'll change anything in the kitchen either."

"Baking with magic defeats its purpose," Draco said with a nod of his own.

Harry hummed his agreement. He regarded Wilson where he cleaned with no more or less enthusiasm than usual, and propped his chin upon an upraised hand. "So… what now?"

Draco settled back into his chair slightly. He considered Harry, pondering, and for all of the contentedness, the satisfaction, the fulfilment and yes, the happiness, he couldn't help but wonder. What would happen now?

Draco had his pâtisserie .

He had his apprentice who was a damn sight better than anyone he could have chosen.

He had his hodge-podge family of sorts that he would _never_ admit to thinking of as a real family.

The peaceful isolation of Merrington, the safety, the comfort of a world away from witches and wizards – Draco had all of that, and he couldn't think of anything he could possibly want more.

The fear of it all changing as he knew it would, of more change that he didn't want this time, and didn't feel the need for, was paramount. And mostly, that fear centred around Harry.

Their weekend had been a series of blissful moments interspersed with passion. Maybe Draco truly was sex-deprived and hungry for it, but he didn't think that was the only reason it had been the best weekend of his life. That it was with Harry, who he'd hardly even considered a possibility when he'd allowed himself to consider it at all, was impossibly wonderful. Half a day spent in bed, while the other half was consumed by lazing upon the couch or following Harry's instruction in how to cook an actual meal by hand; Draco didn't mind taking the role of the learner in that instance, anyway. Even better when they'd shared the meal after with the use of far too many fingers and tongues that was entirely necessary.

Sharing, Draco was gradually growing to realise, might not be such a bad thing after all.

It had been perfect. Too perfect. Draco wasn't a pessimist, but he was realistic enough to know that perfection had a way of escaping him. Happiness too. It always would.

"I think," he began slowly, then had to pause to swallow. To clear his throat. To frown and drop his gaze to his teacup that held about as much appeal in that moment as a soggy éclair. "I think what happens next really depends on you."

Draco felt Harry's gaze turn towards him. He could almost see his stare, his beautiful eyes peering from behind their glasses. After Draco had professed a sorely embarrassing taste for them, Harry had obliged him in wearing them that afternoon without a hint of teasing.

Or maybe a bit of a hint. Maybe more than a bit. "Who knew you actually _liked_ them when you poked shit at me all those years, Draco," Harry had said.

"Shut up, you bespectacled git," had been all Draco could say in reply, a retaliation that was somewhat lessened in severity by the ready acceptance of the kiss Harry smothered him with a moment later.

Draco couldn't look at Harry as he spoke in admission of his thoughts, because he feared Harry would see how unnerved he suddenly was. No, not unnerved but scared. Draco was _scared._

"What do you mean?" Harry asked.

"Well." Draco struggled for casualness that he knew he failed at attaining dismally. "I'm under no allusions that your lodgings at the Chuckling Cupid around the corner are temporary."

"What?" Harry said, his tone nothing if not baffled.

Draco glared at his tea. "Permanent residency would of course be desirable, but if you're of a mind that you're not to be staying indefinitely then –"

"Wait, wait, wait. What?"

When Harry reached a staying hand across the table, Draco couldn't help but glance towards him. He darted his gaze upwards, met Harry's eyes, and was momentarily lost. When had he become so pathetic? Once upon a time he would have demanded Harry stay after the obvious affection they'd shared that weekend. He'd have all but ordered it. And yet here he was, all but pleading as he reached for and held onto Harry's offered hand. "You," Draco said. "I'm not going to keep you here if you –"

"You don't want me to stay?" Harry interrupted him.

"What?" Draco frowned, suddenly vexed. "Where the bloody hell did you get that idea? At what point between the fucking and bloody – bloody _cuddling_ did you think -?"

Harry rolled his eyes as he squeezed Draco's hand in a silencing gesture. "Well, it kind of sounded like you expected me to go."

"You won't?"

Harry squeezed his hand again, though differently this time. Gentler, almost, and warmer. Reassuring. Draco found himself easing just slightly before he could help himself. "Draco," Harry said deliberately. "I'm not going anywhere."

"For now?" Draco couldn't help but ask. The barest quaver in his voice was humiliating.

"For now," Harry said. "And not for a good long while, either. Not when you want me around. Why do you think I'm here in the first place?"

Draco blinked. "What?"

"Why do you think I even came to Merrington?"

"I was under the impression it was for a job interview."

Harry smiled slightly, his fingers playing absently with Draco's own in a frankly distracting manner. "Yes, but aside from that. Your job offer was hardly the most appealing of the selection out there."

Draco frowned, pressing his lips firmly together. "If it's so objectionable then you could just –"

"It was because of you."

That served to silence Draco quite well enough. "I… what?"

"Yeah." Harry smiled slightly wider, yet it seemed more to himself than to Draco. He briefly dropped his gaze to the table between them. "How could I not be interested in Dray Malloy the pâtissier? An idiot wouldn't put two and two together about your name, or at least _wonder_."

Draco wasn't embarrassed. Or not really, anyway. More correctly, he wasn't embarrassed at that moment because every ounce of his attention was focused upon Harry and the suggestion of his words. Harry had come for him? For Draco Malfoy – or Dray Malloy – as much as for the job itself?

A strange tightness afflicted his chest, and Draco found himself squeezing Harry's hand in return. "You were curious," he said slowly.

"I needed a change," Harry agreed more than corrected. "And I guess you were a convenient possibility?" He shrugged. "I can't say curiosity is exactly why I stayed, though."

Draco's mind was jumping and shorting in unveiled wonder. Harry had come to Merrington for him? For _Draco_? For the same curiosity that had driven Draco to hire him in the first place? It seemed almost too good to be true. Too perfect. "You…"

"I'm staying, Draco," Harry said. "And it's not just because I really like you. It's not just 'cause we have great sex, which would be enough to convince most people, anyway."

Draco couldn't deny that. Even in his confusion and wonder he didn't want to. He still had his pride. "Then…?"

"I've known it for a while, now, that I would be," Harry continued. "But last week? With your Peace-Of-Me Charm?" He shook his head, his smile becoming a touch self-deprecating. "The fact that your charm put me right where I baked almost every day of the week wasn't as surprising as it probably should have been. Still, I didn't realise how caught up in your stupid Merrington web I was until then."

"What exactly do you mean?" Draco asked, even if he thought he could already guess. He simply longed to hear it.

"You," Harry said simply. "When you cast your charm, it was for you and yours. You ridiculously clean pâtisserie –"

"That you do your utmost to make a mess of," Draco muttered, if somewhat breathlessly.

" – your workers and how they're so dedicated to you without you seemingly even noticing –"

"My bloody incompetent workers, you mean?"

"- your recipes that are actually a stroke of genius –"

"You admit it now?"

" – and you."

Draco had nothing to say to that last one. "Me," he echoed in a sigh.

Harry idly raised Draco's hand to his cheek, pressing Draco's fingers to his warm skin in such casual fondness that Draco was rendered speechless all over again. "Mm. You. I've been to a lot of places, Draco, but this one? This is the only place I've felt…"

Harry didn't finish his words. He didn't need to. He probably wouldn't have gotten the chance to either, for Draco was rising to his feet with a disregarded clatter of his chair and all but flinging himself across the table. He captured Harry's head in his hands and was drawing him into a kiss desperate and longing. He was so utterly, wonderfully, lovingly ecstatic that Draco almost couldn't contain himself. Not magic, not even baking, could possibly feel so good.

Draco, he decided, had never wanted for anything more in his life.

Wilson's deliberately cleared throat didn't quite shatter the scene, but it was enough to draw Draco's away from Harry just slightly. "If you're going to suck each others faces off, at least but a magical wall around you or whatever."

When had Wilson become so crude? Was he always like that and his quietness just hadn't revealed it?

Not that Draco really cared. He was far more focused upon Harry, to where Harry's gaze stared up at him, so open and soft and unlike yet similar to the boy he'd once been such fierce rivals with. So much had changed in the past few weeks. Even in the last few days. Draco decided that, should nothing else ever change again, he would be entirely satisfied with it.

"So you're staying?" he murmured, fingers curling around Harry's head, into his hair, and holding him nothing if not a little desperately.

Harry's smile, his gorgeous smile, widened further. "I'm staying."

Draco snorted, closed his eyes, and momentarily dropped his forehead against Harry's. The feel of Harry, the smell of him and what he could almost taste at such proximity, was intoxicating. Harry's words rung in his ears, and Draco couldn't think of a sound he more longed to hear.

Then Wilson cleared his throat once more. The bloody boy splintered the moment, and Draco couldn't help but glare at him sidelong. He wasn't even looking their way, seeming nothing if not intent upon scrubbing the windows of the front display counter. "Wilson," Draco said flatly. "Pretend you're more of an oblivious fool than you already are for a moment."

"Yes, sir," Wilson replied in a monotone.

"And don't turn around."

"Sir."

"Pretend you don't know what magic is."

"Already done, sir."

Draco straightened just slightly. He removed a hand from Harry only enough to draw his wand from where it was always holstered to his forearm. "I have to just try," he murmured to himself. "I have to, because if it doesn't work now then nothing in the world could possibly work."

"What?" Harry asked, head tipping in confusion.

Draco didn't reply but to raise his wand. With the feel of Harry's hair slipping through his fingers, the warmth in his own chest, the actual, true fondness in Harry's curious gaze as it rested upon him, Draco cast the spell he'd avoided attempting for years.

And it worked.

Wisps of gossamer white danced to life in the centre of his shop that so rarely saw magic. It swirled, bright and white, coalesced and morphed. Draco heard Harry's breath sharply inhale, heard him sigh it out again in wonder, but for that one instance he didn't turn towards him. Draco's attention was firmly affixed upon the Patronus rapidly curling into corporeal form.

"You know," he all but whispered, "I could have almost guessed it would take such a form."

The wolf was familiar. Identical, almost, to the one that Harry had showed Draco barely more than a week ago. Pale and a little ragged, yet proud and defiant in its broad-chested stoicism. It turned equally pale eyes upon Draco in what Draco, for whatever reason, felt was somehow approving.

A Patronus charm. An actual Patronus. Draco almost couldn't believe he'd cast one at all. But then again, with how he felt at that moment…

He heard more than saw Harry reach for his own wand, and felt more than heard him murmur his own incantation. His fingers tightened where they still rested in Harry's hair, almost clutching as the identical form of a raggedy wolf stepped into existence beside his own.

They were beautiful in their company, the two of them. Not quite so lonesome in a pair, and it was a whole new kind of perfect.

"Well, if that's not an admission of your guilt," Harry murmured.

Draco glanced towards him. Harry had turned his gaze upwards once more, was smiling with what was more of a delighted grin, and shaking his head fondly. "Guilt?" Draco said. "Hardly. More an announcement of intentions to keep what is mine."

"Possessive much?" Harry asked.

"Only always."

"Then I can stay? You're not going to fire me?"

It was a teasing suggestion, but Draco twitched in repulsion of the thought nonetheless. He wanted to vehemently deny such a possibility, but instead settled for grasping Harry's head with both hands again and pressing another short, forceful kiss upon his lips. "Hell, Harry, you can have a whole half of my flat for as long as you want it, to say nothing of your job."

Harry laughed against his lips, breath whispering into Draco's mouth. "Should I be concerned that you'll treat your future apprentices this way?"

 _What future apprentices?_ Draco wanted to say. That, and _Why would I possibly want anyone else in my flat but you?_

But he didn't. Draco didn't say either of that and the urge to tease, to reprimand, to chide pompously and smirk his superiority with a witty retaliation, were for once absented too. It was likely because he was infatuated, Draco rationalised. He'd regain his senses in several day's time, he knew, even if he similarly knew that he wouldn't release his hold of Harry in the process.

But for now, Draco was more than happy to vanquish any such illusions of future annoyances and past oversights Harry might have. In the middle of the patisserie, Chopin's piano and the aroma of baked goods a melody upon the senses, and Wilson studiously ignoring them both, Draco gave in entirely.

"Harry, I think we both know that you were never just an apprentice."

* * *

A/N: Thank you so, so much for reading! I hope you liked it :D If you did - I mean, I hesitate to promote my own work, but my story After the War was written very much with this story in mind, so if you're interesting in the preceding that led Harry to where he was in this fic, please feel free to check it out.

Also, please, please, PLEASE let me know if you did like this story it with a review, or if you had any thoughts. I'd love to hear absolutely anything you have to say!

Thanks again, wonderful reader. I appreciate the dedication of your time and hope you liked it as much as I did writing it :)


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